Four mornings a week, a group of local women starts the day with a swim class at the Marblehead YMCA. They call themselves the Noodlettes. But the exercise is only part of the ritual.
Afterward comes coffee — and conversation.
The group of 14 women has been swimming together at the YMCA since 2014, gathering at Dario’s Cafe after their workouts to catch up over a cup of coffee. Over the years, the post-swim gathering has become as important as the laps in the pool.
Recently, though, one member of the group began thinking about all those coffee cups.
“It was killing my heart” using all those paper coffee cups, said Mary McCormick-Gendzel, a retired nurse and member of Sustainable Marblehead.
And there were a lot of cups.
If 10 women each bought a coffee after four swims a week, their little morning tradition would generate roughly 2,000 disposable cups a year.
McCormick-Gendzel encouraged her friends to bring reusable mugs from home. Everyone agreed it was a great idea.
Remembering to bring them for an 8 a.m. swim was another matter.
Some were diligent. Others, the women acknowledged with a laugh, were not quite as successful.
Enter Wei Wade, who runs Dario’s Cafe at the Y and sees the group almost every morning.
Wade came up with a solution: Keep reusable coffee mugs at the cafe just for the swimmers.
“The girls want to save the earth, and this is an easy way to make a difference,” Wade said.
She started with four mugs, then added more as needed — first eight, then 12.
Now, when the women emerge from their swim, their cups are waiting for them at one end of the counter, where they can get their coffee without slowing down the cafe’s other customers.
For Wade, the gesture is about more than eliminating waste.
“It’s all about being part of a community,” she said.
That sense of community is evident around the table, where the women trade stories, tease one another and talk about ways to live a little more sustainably.
The reusable cups have sparked conversations about recycling and plastics — including what can and cannot go into recycling bins. Some of the women say those conversations have followed them home, making them more likely to speak up when family members toss the wrong thing into the recycling.
JoAnn Solomon said she takes plastic straws home so she can reuse them. Others pointed to efforts such as the water-filling stations at the Marblehead Festival of Arts, which encourage people to bring reusable bottles rather than buying disposable ones.
And their coffee cups demonstrate how quickly one seemingly tiny habit can add up.
One reusable mug doesn’t seem likely to change the world. But multiply it by a dozen friends, four mornings a week, month after month, and suddenly a trash can has a lot fewer cups in it.
About 2,000 fewer each year.
The women hope their experiment might inspire other groups of friends, co-workers or regular coffee drinkers to consider their own routines and find simple ways to cut down on waste.
For these swimmers, it hasn’t required giving anything up.
They still swim. They still gather. They still drink their coffee.
Now, they just have a mug waiting for them when they get out of the pool.
