Who wouldn’t want to turn a metaphorical as well as a calendar page in early January and, in the process, magic into being a shiny, bright and better version of yourself?

With one resolute clean sweep, let us cast off the old and ring in the new. As for the how-to of transformation, take your pick.

Set goals, advises one expert. Make the changes stick, says another. Try Veganuary, says yet another. There’s ate-in’ and drinkin’ in that term, a portmanteau word coined by the eponymous charity to encourage people to try eating vegan this January.

It’s a fine idea, among very many others but I can’t help thinking that stepping on board the self-optimisation train so early in the year — indeed at any time of the year — is the very same as buying a one-way ticket to an unreachable destination.

There’s hard evidence to back that up. Survey after survey tells us that January resolutions often don’t even last the month.

From where I’m sitting, nay slumping, that elusive place (home of the New You) will be forever out of reach. Even if you do succeed in finding a better variation of yourself, you will always feel compelled to search further. It’s a journey that never ends. The wellness industry depends on it.

Yet, there is a promise that change will somehow happen quickly. Every single one of those “kickstart the new year” campaigns feeds on the collective desire to cast off the excess weight and/or emotional baggage, dead-end job, toxic colleagues in time for, say, Valentine’s Day.

Bear in mind, though, that Valentine’s Day falls on the same day as Ash Wednesday this year. Handy, because just as soon as you’ve finished one personal detox programme, you can use the liturgical calendar to embark on another. The gods of personal change favour the goal-setters this year.

Thankfully, another change also appears to be taking place. Is it too soon to say that we have finally accepted the evidence showing us that resolutions just don’t work? I hope not.

Perhaps this will be the year when we can finally stop dangling an unattainable hologram image of our imagined selves in front of our battered and bruised real selves.

Things certainly look hopeful when you start to see articles and websites recommending that you take time this year to celebrate failure with friends, or schedule time to be bored or, better still, read 10 books by foreign authors.

A personal favourite is this (science-backed) line in the January newsletter from the ever-practical Glenville

Nutrition clinic. It reads: “Don’t diet. Do something that works instead.”

The clinic also quotes UK research which estimates that the average time most of us can stick to a diet is five weeks and two days.

Worse than that, 95% of those who made the effort will regain the weight they lost and, most likely, put on even more. It’s day six of the new year, if you haven’t already broken your diet, do so now.

If there is a thread running through the avalanche of advice sweeping over us this year, it is the encouraging and forgiving observation that making small, doable changes will add up to big things in the long run.

So that is why, this year, I won’t be kickstarting anything or jumping aboard the transformation train. Instead, I’ve resolved to make one simple, small change — to stop using single-use coffee cups.

It is indeed a very first-world problem particularly when you consider that some people are forced to reuse those coffee cups to beg in doorways so that they might raise the money to eat or be housed for the night.

Yet, we are living in a country wealthy enough to send some 2m throwaway cups to landfill every

day. Two million! Who could have predicted that a nation raised on cost-effective home-brewed pots of tea would take to speciality coffees with such gusto?

Bord Bia estimates that three-quarters of us now drink coffee daily, and judging by the landfill figures, Barista Nation likes its coffee on the go.

Even if you’re not a serial offender, buying a single takeaway cup a day is an act of caffeination that generates as much as 11kg of waste a year. However, shedding that 11kg couldn’t be easier.

The simplest step is to invest in your own coffee cup. Many cafes will give you a discount if you use a reusable or keepsake cup. Perhaps many more would come on board if we queued up with our own mugs and asked for a price reduction.

ReCupán Galway, which campaigns to increase the use of reusable cups, promotes cafes that give a discount on its Facebook page. That’s a win-win for café and consumer alike. The model could be easily replicated around the country.

It’s not as if we are against the idea of cutting down on waste. When a new levy on disposable coffee cups was mooted last November, more than half of us (56%) thought it was a good idea, according to an Amarách Research poll.

The so-called latte levy, which is being considered, would operate like the plastic bag levy and cost around

10c to 15c a cup.

There is, of course, many a slip twixt levied cup and lip, but there is other encouraging news.

Earlier this week, Galway chef and restaurant owner JP McMahon tweeted that Tartare café’s newly designed compostable cups were now available in Galway.

The cups can be put in the food waste brown bin and they will break down into the soil in six to 12 weeks.

As he said: “Let’s make a difference in 2018!”