Cinnamon Cup Coffee - a warm community - suggested to tell us about our habits concerning coffee mugs. Since I feel attracted to this subject, I gladly jumped on this invitation. My first blog in the new year will be about coffee mugs 😜😋 ... even if I am late, I will share those thoughts and selected visuals anyway.
First things first, right? I do love disposable mugs (we all do, right?) but it is important to love reusable ones more. Why? Mostly, due to ecology. I bet you'd prefer not your grandparents would end their life piled up to the head in rubbish, right?
My habits are simple, I prefer to drink coffee at home (I brew it myself), when I travel with my family, we always borrow with the luggage our personal mugs - "travel edition", to keep the weight at minimum. Especially for this post I took the photo of our family travel mugs:
One is Titanium (it has cool double-layer sides to keep drink hot longer!), one is Aluminum, and one is good old plastic! 😉
Below is one of my very personal memorable shots from 2009; this cup was taken from a coffee machine at Warshawa central railway station early in the morning, on our last day, right before the departure.
Of course, both during photo walks around the city, and long trips to the nature, there is often a desire to take a rest stop, recuperate and have a cup of coffee. In this case, my company and I usually choose a café to seat and drink from reusable ceramic dishes. Using disposable cups in such a case is not only stupid, but harmful. And, yes, I try to minimize drinking coffee on the go; I have not developed such a habit (although ofc it happens from time to time, but in my case it has not become a rule and ritual). Below there is more thoughts and information for you to consider...
Unlike the standard Nescafe design, this beautiful cup is exclusive and printed over with recognizable iconic views of St.Petersburg, the city I am living in.
It has an irresistible attraction both for city dwellers and tourists! Coffee from such a glass is twice as tasty... (but that is not for sure, haha!) Ok, maybe it isnt tastier, but surely this way it is more enjoyable and memorable! And looks super cool in your insta, right?..
Family look. Nice!
A cup of coffee on the way to the office or classes is a daily ritual for many. A cup in hand against some interesting background become one of the most frequent images at social networks. A disposable cup somehow became associated with success, easy pleasurable living and an idle lifestyle. WTF?!
This harmless (actually: not) habit has contributed enormously to the waste crisis, but the silent majority used to think very little about it.
Every year, 600 billion coffee cups (!) are thrown away worldwide (and thus +600 billion plastic cup caps, as well...) According to Greenpeace, about 41 billion coffee cups are used in Russia per year. Data src. Residents of Germany throw away 320,000 cups per hour, for the UK the totals are 300,000. This in itself would not be a problem if they only could be recycled. Most folks consider, since the cup is paper, this is exactly what will happen. Alas!
In fact, paper cups are made not from paper, at least not 100% - this is a misconception. Conduct yourself an experiment, try pouring hot water into a cardboard bag - you will see how fast it gets wet and falls apart; in a matter of seconds! Disposable cups actually are high-tech products, a real multi-layer “sandwiches”, featuring polypropylene film and glue, which hardly can be separated from the paper fraction... And that is the key point why waste paper recycling plants do not accept such stuff - so, they go straight to landfill.
Besides, many coffee lovers do not bother themselves at all, and the cups they throw away decorate the streets and lawns of the city.
Another important fact: recycled paper does not match for making sturdy cups; thus the cups are being made from virgin cellulose, which comes from trees. Therefore, making cups inevitably requires cutting down trees. Yes, wood is a renewable resource, but it takes a long time to recover. On average, a small metropolitan cafe uses monthly 1.5-3 thousand disposable cups - which volume is an equivalent to one tree per year.
...end of part 1: what's wrong.
now, part 2: what to do?!
The solution to the problem is to radically reduce consumption, or completely abandon disposable paper cups. There are different initiatives in different countries...
The most radical (and ideal, i.e. unattainable) solution to the problem would be a personal refusal to use disposable cups. Environmental organizations urge you to always carry a reusable thermal mug with you. Some cafes are conducting experiments and incentivizing visitors financially - increasing the price tag, and giving a discount of up to 20% to those who bring their own reusable cups. Experiments show that financial incentives have an effect... to some extent. But it is impossible to rely 100% on this decision.
A more realistic solution is to find an alternative to plastic and paper cups with a polyethylene coating, i.e. invent technologies that provide simple and profitable recycling. So, some manufacturers suggest using dishes made from corn starch or sugar cane fiber (cake) instead of paper cups. After use, such a glass can be safely buried in the soil - in two to three months it will decompose into ash and minerals, i.e. will turn into fertilizer. Profit!
Another solution I read about while preparing this post is an edible cup. Wow!!! They are made from thick dough and coated on the inside with chocolate glaze. Some manufacturers guarantee that such a glass will withstand boiling water for up to 2 hours! I read that such cups also occur in my city, but I have never personally encountered them. Alas, this exotic solution did not become popular and widespread... firstly, edible cups themselves require packaging (also plastic), and secondly, not all visitors want to eat sweet dough - therefore, half-eaten and bitten waste will be inevitable, and This kind of garbage is the main problem of landfills...
On the left: Otto's coffee shop in Sevenoaks, Kent, UK went viral with initiative to serve only customers who bring their own cup to the store. Quite radical! They filled store floor with disposable cups to illustrate why they are doing this. #img #src: reddit.(If you run google search with "Otto's coffee shop in Sevenoaks" keywords, you will find more stunning images. I wish I had something in my neightborhood to take my own pics, but I do not... )
All the rest visuals in this post (as always) are my own. Hope you enjoyed today's selection, as well as the thoughts. Enjoy your coffee... and dont forget about the coffee cups utilisation issues. Best wishes in the newcoming year of 2024!
Here... I must confess, I used this coffee cup not in the best eco-friendly way, I simply could not resist the temptation. But I swear, it was a rare exception!
