Tea shops in city to switch to eco-friendly paper cups

Chennai, Oct 18 (UNI) Thousands of small tea shops, ubiquitous in this bustling metro city, will henceforth serve tea and coffee in environment-friendly paper cups.

Sai Paper products, a leading manufacturer of paper cups, has come out with a novel idea of providing paper cups carrying advertisements.

Launching the eco-friendly cups here today, Sai Paper Products Director Karthikeyan said since tea shop was the most frequented place by many people. The company has tied up with the Chennai Metropolitan Tea Shop Owners Assocation to use paper cups in their shops.

''There are about 8,000 tea shops in the City. We will be reaching about 2,000 shops in the first six months, by bringing shop owners under the Sai Paper network as member shops of Green Cafe'', he said.

''Initially we identified about 500 shops, which will be given paper cups with advertisements through Paper Cup Media at 50 per cent of the cost. Each cup costs about 40 to 45 paise.

We will give them to tea shops at 20 paise per cup'', he said.

Mr Karthikeyan said the company was also holding talks with several corporates to have their company's advertisement on cups. The minimum order would be for Rs 1.5 lakh for five lakh cups.

He said about 25 lakh cups would be given to 2,500 shops (1000 cups per shop) tomorrow free of cost to create awareness on ''say no to plastics for a green environment''.

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