Re-useable coffee cups and food hygiene, am I the only one to be worried?

Don’t know about that - British Rail had some great restaurant cars on some trains service wonderful meals - coffee in a china cup would have been child’s play - but would involve finding your way to the buffet car!!

Hard to do the bone china cup and saucer on the train !

No wonder - if I am in need of a coffee I factor in a sit down to drink it too! I try to never eat or drink in the street - just a thing from school days where it was something you were not supposed to do when wearing uniform!

Take away coffees and teas and other hot drinks from any of the coffee chains including Virgin trains, Waitrose supermarkets etc are served in disposable cups Welshwife.

I can’t remember the last time I was given a disposable cup in a coffee shop - whether a big chain or an individual private shop! All have given me a sparkling clean china cup. I suppose on a railway station or on a train there could be reason for a disposable cup - but where else are you all going to be given these disposable cups?

At least we couldn't make one where I worked - we had to wait until coffee break - so we did!

Why do people have to wander around with a coffee? Either drink it there or wait until you get to the office and make one.
That's what we used to do.

I think we need to rethink the whole disposable business altogether - not landfill, not even recycling, but NOT USING.

a poor solution to the problem of not being able to currently recycle disposable coffee cups.
I will agree with that. They need to re-think the whole disposable cup business.

Paranoid nanamacGeek ? You?
Never!!
I am amazed you ever eat or drink outside your own home, given the convoluted scenario you envisage.
Paw was on immunosuppressants for over 20 years and never went down with anything comparable to what you describe.
I would respectfully point out that it is not compulsory to pay inflated coffee bar prices but if you are happy with paying about 3 quid for a cuppa you won’t mind the extra 25p will you.

One's homemade germs are always the best aren't they?
Well, when my immune system was knocked out I avoided going out but got sepsis anyway.

I'm glad I drink tea!

I think, given the prices, my cup would be the size of a bucket.

I usually catch something from the DGC or when I use the bus. Public toilets and food outlets are much cleaner than transport and family.

MawBroon, I'm sure that you would wash up your cup carefully, wrap it up and, when you fancied a cup of coffee when you are out shopping, hand it over safely to a barista to have it filled. But not everyone is like you. You could follow someone who has brought back his/her disposable cup from a couple of hours earlier (cup with no handle, possibly not even washed or swilled out in a washroom), barista busy and grabs the cup in hurry, puts her fingers on contaminated parts, fills cup touching the coffeee making equipment as part of the process, passes cup back and picks up yours. Imagine a busy coffee bar and think how often this may happen. It's introducing contamination which wasn't part of the process before.

Some are saying I'm paranoid but I think providing your own cup to get a discount to drink out (off the premises) is a poor solution to the problem of not being able to currently recycle disposable coffee cups.

Well explained Jalima. That must reassure those who see germs lurking everywhere. And if they are still not reassured, well don't eat or drink outside the home. One's homemade germs are always the best aren't they? . I don't frequent the big coffee chains on principal. And on price, as someone up-thread said 3 quid for a cardboard cup of coffee is barmy.
I actually think the Starbucks takeaway coffee cup is a fashion accessory these days, like the obligatory plastic Volvic/Evian water bottle.

I am trying to imagine this.
Person hands over cup to barista, barista takes cup by handle and places it under the coffee machine which dispenses coffee. The cup is hot so barista takes it by the handle and puts it on the counter for the customer.

My immune system is not good and I am careful but this is definitely not something that would have been on my radar.

But why not NanaMacGeek? If you took your own mug, from home, at least you'd know that it had been properly washed and dried, wouldn't you? If you were to ask the assistant in the coffee shop to only handle it by it's handle, you'd be assured that no extraneous germs had contaminated it, surely?

GabriellaG, I don't think anyone would be happy to eat in the premises you describe in your last post but you misunderstand me. I'm not bothered by normal practices in a regulated food outlet, as you say, staff handling food are required to undergo training. I understand my risks very well and have sometimes complained and walked away. However, introducing possibly unwashed and contaminated containers into the serving area of a busy coffee bar moves the goalposts as far as I'm concerned.

I also hate the fact that we use disposable cups that can't be recycled. We need a better solution but don't believe that people providing their own coffee cups should be part of it.

But it’s your own takeaway cup jalima so if anybody’s washing up is at fault it is yours!!
I must be seriously missing a point here - or somebody else is.
#pearlclutchers

Why, if the cup has a handle, would anyone pick it up by the rim?

Well, my immune system is not great but I don't really follow this either - but then I rarely go into Starbucks and I do think they need to do something urgently about these non-disposable cups.

Whenever I have had a mouth ulcer I have attributed it to my immune system being particularly low - or to a change of toothpaste, not from picking it up from someone's else's poor washing up.

Please explain how drinking out of your own coffee cup which you have taken into Starbucks or wherever is going to spread your herpes virus to others? Call me naïve but I just don’t follow this.

Nana, I feel the exact same as you, though I was shot down in flames when I posted my feelings on a Facebook group on the subject. I actually suffer from occasional cold sores and would be horrified if this horrible virus was passed on to some poor innocent. I’m not one of those who is constantly disinfecting everything, but this is one thing about which I am passionate.

Yes, I have the same misgivings... I frequently go on cruises and there are notices on the water machines telling people not to use their own receptacles but to use one of the cups provided, to avoid spreading "disease". I have caught so many people sticking the rim of their water bottles into these machines and have admonished them, the staff seem afraid to approach a paying customer, so I have to do their job for them! Fortunately I never go into coffee shops so will avoid the new regime.