Coffee Bean low fat latte, that is how I love to start my mornings. The paper coffee cup -filled with steaming hot milk, Arabica coffee beans, wrapped up with a 100% recycled paper brown sleeve, covered by a white plastic traveler lid, that constantly reminds us that the beverage we are about to enjoy am about is extremely hot, in three different Latin based languages- is the perfect to start to the morning for 4 out of 5 Americans! (Granted I am not American, but let’s assume for the purpose of this statistic that I am). And of course after enjoying my morning delight, I toss the paper cup away into the plastic bag trashcan, tucked beneath my desk. I took the paper cup about 2 miles away from its original destination, enjoyed the contents and chucked it away. By the end of the day, (granted I don’t go for round 2, this time at Starbucks), the garbage is collected, along with my paper coffee cup, and thrown into an even bigger plastic bag. This cycle is repeated daily, for a year, 360 or so days of a paper cup coffee morning. 360 paper coffee cups thrown, by me alone.
What happens to my paper cup after it’s been taken away? It’s probably recycled and probably dumped somewhere piling up Jeddah’s waste more and more. I never let the thought irritate me, I continue drinking my cup of coffee like it doesn’t phase me what this cup of coffee is doing to degrade the environment, and infect Earth, our planet, and only home.
Not to bog you down with too much statistics or information, but I took it upon myself to find out just how much a simple thing like a cup of coffee could do to the world, and here is what I discovered:
The word “paper” might suggest that the paper cup is easily recycled and that it is not as bad as its plastic cousin. However, most paper cups are coated with a plastic resin (i.e., polyethylene) for durability and convenience, therefore making both their composting and recycling uncommon and raising the specter of carcinogenic chemical leeching- In plain English that means more pollution affecting our health and the health of our planet.
According to one study on the environmental impacts of paper cups, each cup, taking into account the paper, the paper sleeve, production and shipping, emits about 0.11 kilograms of CO2.- CO2 is considered a greenhouse gas and is one of the ingredients of Global Warming. Global Warming, that term
Depending on forestry practices (and whether they are sustainable or not) paper cup production results in loss of trees, ecosystem degradation and a reduction in the planet’s carbon absorption capacity.
In our world of shrinking forests and growing landfill, continued use of the paper cup is both redundant and unsustainable- and therefore ought to be abolished altogether.
But who are we fooling? Even if there are alternative ways of drinking a cup of coffee, like in a porcelain mug, or (and I had to do some research to find this out) in a MiCup (if this hits big it would be the best alternative) we would still buy the coffee in a paper cup, enjoy it and chuck it away (95% of the time in a garbage can, or its equivalent).
The problem with our society is that we have succumb to the fast pace life; every minute wasted is a dollar wasted. We recklessly need our lifestyle to accommodate to the fast pace life: If we have a headache, we pop a Tylenol “Fast Acting” pill, if we are hungry we have drive thru, if an email comes we promptly reply with our blackberry devices (or it’s smart phone equivalent).
Just like running a marathon, if we don’t pace ourselves we will never make it to the finish line, we would have exhausted all our energy and power whizzing our way through life haphazardly. Even if we pay attention to how sick we our making ourselves, and our world as a result of our Prozac jarred life- (and I use Prozac to substitute for any kind of unnatural stimulant)- infused with our increasingly materialistic life, that has us chasing the ‘green’ to spend on more wasteful things, we wouldn’t change our ways, because it takes too much energy out of us to change our ways, just to ensure sustainable development and a healthy Earth for future generations, and healthy parents for our unborn children.
If we take the paper cup coffee to be the microcosm of how wasteful our society has become, may be we can learn to reflect on other aspects of our lives that has left both us and our world a savannah of dry wasteland, with no salvageable value.
You may find me walking around with a paper cup coffee, I don’t see myself stopping that habit yet, but one day I will….
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