Our Story
The KeepCup story
It started in a Melbourne cafe with a simple idea: keep it and use it again.
When siblings Abigail and Jamie Forsyth started a café business in Melbourne in 1998, disposable cups were entering the public landscape; the signifier of a busy professional life and a vibrant independent coffee scene.
As the business grew, so did their concerns about the volume of packaging being consumed, particularly disposable cups; lined with polyethylene, they were non-recyclable.
In 2007, following the successful trial of a reusable soup mug, and the unsuitabilty of existing thermoses and mugs for refill in a café environment, they decided to design and manufacture their own – a barista standard reusable cup for people to enjoy better coffee on the go.
They took a huge gamble that usability, low-impact manufacturing and design aesthetics could drive behaviour change and make a difference to how people think about convenience culture.
The first KeepCups were sold to coffee-loving Melbournians in 2009 at an independent design market. Right away people recognised KeepCup as the solution to a problem they were concerned about - single-use packaging and the volume of waste entering the environment. The reuse movement grew from there, consumer driven with the endorsement and support of the café and roaster community.
The goal was always to kick start behaviour change, from discard to reuse – to deliver a positive global campaign that would change the status quo. Today, KeepCup has grown to define a product category.
KeepCups are now used in more than 75 countries around the world and users, or reusers, divert millions of disposable cups from landfill every day. Their actions inspire others to do the same.
People purchase KeepCups because they love the way they look and feel, and continue to use them because they form a positive habit.
For many of our customers, using KeepCup has been the beginning of their journey to reduce the consequences of convenience behaviour.
For a while there, carrying a KeepCup was like being in a secret club; a nod to aspirational behaviour for the world. With this positive change now established in the mainstream, we now have a greater responsibility to continue to change the sustainability conversation in word and deed.
You are a changemaker. The things you say and ways you live are charting the course for our future.