"Canadians use 1.6 billion disposable hot drink cups each year.
- Environment Canada
Yes, you are reading correctly: Canadians use more than 1.6 billion sheets of paper and polystyrene cup every year. It corresponds to 500,000 trees. Yikes! And all cups after using once must end somewhere.
Where the majority of these cups are buried is a landfill site.
According to Alive's website, 114.5 million kilograms of paper cup waste (equivalent to 22,900 elephants) is dumped into the landfill in Canada every year.
Even Toronto alone, 1 million paper cups are thrown away every day.
In the United States, 25 billion coffee cups are used every year.
Necessary for the manufacture of disposable hot drink paper cup
To produce 25 billion paper cups each year in the U.S., an estimated 9.4 million trees have to be reduced, 7 trillion BTU of energy is needed and 21.6 billion liters of water is needed.
About Canada? The 1.6 billion paper coffee required 650,000 trees and 400 million gallons of water.
Furthermore, according to a study by Starbucks and the alliance for environmental innovation (April 2000), each of the paper cups produced has a CO2 emission of 0.24 pounds (Carry Your Cup's website).
In other words, the manufacture of disposable cups is very resource intensive. It requires timber, plenty of water, and a lot of energy to place a Java cup in your hands ... into a cup that is used only once.
It makes a lot more sense to buy a reusable coffee mug and use it again and again. The only way to reduce the amount of disposable coffee cups we send to the landfill is to stop using them first. Simple, yes. However, it is obviously not easy.
Tim Hortons and Starbucks were somewhat aggressive in offering discounts to people using their cups and dealing with problems by introducing a recycling program. However, a recent CBC survey article ("Tim Hortons, Starbucks recycling claim may be garbage", October 30, 2015) reveals the actual destination of the cup placed in the recycled container I did ... and a recycling plant.
Disposable cups are difficult to recycle
Disposable coffee cups are not like other recyclable materials. Most paper cups are made with only a small amount of recycled material, as recycled paper products can not hold hot liquids. In fact, the disposable cups do not meet health standards according to environmental Canada, they are not robust enough to support liquids, so they can not actually be made of recycled paper.
Furthermore, in order to prevent the cup from leaking, the plastic is covered so as not to be properly recycled. Many people think that paper coffee cups are recyclable, but most facilities are not accepted for plastic linings.
So paper coffee cups may seem like environmentally friendly alternatives, but the lining not only makes it difficult to recycle the cup, but also does not break easily in the landfill. It may end up in the food chain.
It is difficult for the custom to break
Manufacturing and disposal of single use disposable hot drink cups is not only wasted but also mass consumption of resources and can be drastically reduced if drinking habits from reusable mugga increase.
Oh ... but there are problems. That is to make things become troublesome as people become actions and try to make people change their habits for better profit.
In this day and age, you will have to listen to ideas to hide under the rocks (which you can not access the internet) over the past 10 years and use reusable ones Coffee mug. It is not entirely new. Heck, I used reusable coffee mug in college in the early 1990 's.
But at that time, carrying a reusable coffee mug was a little cool. It showed you were careful about the planet, but despite the most important thing, I believed that small actions taken by many people make a difference.
Unfortunately, according to the Sightline Institute's survey, less than 2% of coffee lovers have their own mugs in Starbucks (April 7, 2016, Margaret Morales' Reusable Coffee Mugs still used Reason why, Tyee).
Based on my personal observation at Starbucks Tim Hortons, this statistic sounds unfortunately sound like right.
So, why do not people use reusable coffee cups?
People do not mind? Or do not people think that at this time, even if there is one disposable cup, whatever kind of difference will be created in the landfill? If so, technically, this is true. But if thousands of people switch to using reusable mugs in the daily coffee cup, this will create a difference.
Alas, it is hard to do, to make people look beyond themselves and the small influence that individual actions give to large pictures. But I know the people who are thinking about this ... people who actually consider the cumulative impact of millions of people's behavior, including their own. It is possible.
"Margaret Morales of The Tyee article on April 7, 2016 says" There are several obstacles to the reusable tuna renaissance. " "It is inconvenient to carry tumbler, a unique travel mug may annoy the barista, paper coffee cups also become status symbols, signals of wealth and a busy schedule, consumers gave it up and got angry "I said.
interesting. I think Morales may be there something.
Morales said, "For coffee lovers, the opportunity to wander around fresh paper cups and showcase the cosmopolitan lifestyle has gone away."
Personally, I do not understand this. Because it is not my way of thinking. However, I believe that only 2% of the coffee beverages purchasing drinks from a coffee shop do not actually use reusable coffee cups, but somehow somehow a cultural change in the past ten years has one small impact You should try it.
No matter what we are doing, I believe that there is no difference and I am giving up, why do you care?
Of course, there are many other reasons that people do not use reusable coffee cups. Do not you know that billions of disposable cups are heading to landfill every year?
Or, some people believe that disposable paper cups are okay because they are recycled (not necessarily so). I certainly thought of this - I did not have a reusable cup with me, but I still wanted coffee, tea or hot chocolate.
Or are people just busy? Or they may have forgotten to bring it. At the end of today, I think that it will be a priority, as it will often be coffee.
If people can relax with confidence that a small act of using a reusable coffee cup produces some difference (at least they get something reusable if there is no reason other than contributing to the problem You may take precedence) Bring them with them and use them actually.
And, as more people start using reusable hot drink cups, doing so will be cool.
What can I do?
If you have not used it yet, you can consider reusable mugs as part of your daily life.
- Buy a reusable mug that you really like
- Keep reusable cups in vehicles and bags
- Use tea, coffee, water, pop, other drink mugs
- Rinse your cup at the end of the day and use it again the following day
- Use reusable mugs at your workplace
- If you drink a drink at the coffee shop and there are no reusable cups, go to a mug
- Share this blog with other users
If you are using reusable coffee mug, or when you start using
If you have a plastic reusable mug, please check the recyclable number on the bottom. According to the National Geographic Green Guide, numbers 2, 4 and 5 do not release substances into foods and can be recycled in most municipalities.
People who like metals, some epoxy liners contain unhealthy chemical bisphenol A, so please choose one without liner.
