bring your own mug

On May 20, 2011, Seattle resident Karin de Weille took on the mushrooming problem of disposable cups.  In the city of caffeine, this was courageous campaign for sustainable consumption.  According to the Seattle Times, several local movements and businesses showed their support including one coffeehouse chain that raised its reusable mug discount from 10 to 25 cents.  “Let's show that we can do this and our success will be duplicated in other cities,” Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin was one of the supporters of Seattle’s campaign to kick to habit of disposable cups.

            Every year, Americans use 56 billion paper cups (International Paper).  Of this staggering amount of waste, Starbucks alone discards 3 billion cups.  According to International Paper, “Less than 2 percent of Starbucks beverages are served in reusable cups.”

While disposable cups are convenient for the consumer on the go, they are detrimental to the environment with their petroleum-based plastic lining.  Not only does this part of the cup delay the decomposition of the paper components, it is also produced from non-renewable materials (International Paper).

In response to this problem, International Paper, in collaboration with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, designed the “ecotainer” in 2006.  Instead of plastic liner, the ecotainer uses a modified biopolymer resin which can be composted and ultimately reused as landscaping and farming material.  Thanks to this development in sustainable distribution, International Paper claims more than 1 million pounds of petrochemical plastic never made its way into the landfill.  

According to International Paper, half a billion of its ecotainers negated the use of “enough petroleum to heat more than 32,000 homes for one year.”  Since 2006, ecotainers can be found everywhere including at the UC Davis CoHo. 

         Clearly these companies thrive on the consumer mentality of disposable convenience.  If we were all more eco-conscious instead of profit driven, each paper cup would come with a discouraging statement about the unsustainable methods of producing and disposing billions of paper cups for our convenience.

If you visit the CoHo every morning as I do, you dispose of five cups every week.  That adds up to 60 cups every quarter—assuming you don’t make a second trip in the afternoon after the cup you used in the morning has already been disposed of.  This routine adds up to 5 disposable cups per week, amounting to $8 worth of small coffees.  This quarter alone, fueling my caffeine addiction has cost a total of at least $96 and at least 60 disposable cups. 

Guilt campaigns against plastic carrier bags are making headway, some stores charge you for requiring a plastic bag, others offer discounts for bringing your own reusable bag.  If Americans can ditch the convenience of one-time-use plastic bags, we can make it a habit to bring our own reusable cups to our daily coffee fill stations.  While it may be a pain to cart around a dirty empty container after your morning dose, just think of how many disposable cups you will have saved.  While your reusable coffee mug is not the first thing you grab on your way out the door, there is still time to change our cultural addiction to convenience.