There's a discussion underway in Berlin.....just within the city itself.....over putting up a special tax on coffee of 10 to 20 Euro cents. The deal? They say there's too many coffee cups that get dropped on the ground and left as scattered trash. Naturally, a tax would fix this problem (yeah, it's an illogical thought....but this is Germany).
The claim is that they'd hire people or enhance their cleaning process to handle the extra cups (which they are apparently already handle). It's not clear how this would fix anything except generate tens of millions throughout the city.
It would only affect those who got coffee in paper cups....so if you stopped at some pub or coffee shop and had a regular cup of coffee there.....things would be 'fine'. I'm guessing if you walked in with your own thermos or personal cup.....they'd fill it....charge you....and the tax would be avoided.
A bogus deal? Well.....yeah.
Around the city I live (Wiesbaden).....I'd take a guess that 80,000 cups of coffee get bought daily. So at 20-cents each, it'd be 1,600 Euro collected each day for the city....if they implemented the same scheme. If you asked me about paper cups laying around.....I might spot forty cups laying around.....mostly in city parks or near the train station. Most folks dump their cups into the paper garbage. A big deal? No. But I guess that a coffee tax would make me feel better. All of this would lead folks to carrying their own coffee cup around and drinking coffee in a somewhat unsanitary way....if you ask me.
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