The coffee industry has come a long way in the past 20 years.
When Abigail Forsyth founded BlueBag cafés with her brother Jamie in 1998, she tells BeanScene the takeaway coffee culture the Melbourne CBD is now famous for, had barely begun.
“We tend to forget that takeaway coffee is a recent phenomenon. We were actually one of the first cafés to introduce branded disposable cups. I remember a lawyer once came in and said drinking out of the disposable cup felt a little embarrassing, like he was drinking out of a sippy cup,” Abigail says.
“But over the years, the takeaway cup became a bit of a status symbol. It meant you were busy, in a rush, and important. Now, it’s flipped back. People are seeing the catastrophic waste that’s being caused by convenience culture. We’ve run the full circle.”
The waste dilemma was apparent to Abigail from the
