Coffee Cups Are Next
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The business was a media organization and it seemed to me like reporters were the worst culprits.
The company provided styrofoam cups which were consumed at a enormous rate, and this was deemed to be a better solution than trying to get journalists to rinse their cups.
It is almost as bad as the somewhat inexplicable growth in bottled water in places where tap water is perfectly acceptable. In fact many of the branded bottles of water are not spring water but bottled tap water.
people don’t spend their money and carry huge loads of water bottles if they can have the equivalent for « free » at home. If they do it’s because the tap water infrastructure (as a whole, up to the kitchen’s tap) alter the taste and quality of the water badly enough, even in the cases where the original source is of comparable quality.
It's marketing that drives the preference. That's why most chronic bottled water drinkers I know surround their life with other bullshit irrelevant products. It's the same mechanics
That said, I think plastic can be OK if it is trashed adequately. I don't think my plastic bottles end up in the oceans.
Are you saying that 5 minute task every few years is more work then manually lugging 10,000 gallons of water through say, 10,000 separate containers, carrying each one, opening them manually each time, tipping and pouring them, then discarding them? (that's the weight of about 25 cars)
Not to be rude but I don't believe you.
As it stands, I have trouble to descale the washing machine every six months.
I know that the simple table based filters (a can with a filter to filter 1 liter of water) are often not exchanged frequently enough.
Why introduce that risk unnecessarily?
Every filtration system I have owned needs to have the cartridges replaced every six months. What system has multi-year cartridges?
What other-worldly solution do you think the bottling companies are using?
$25'000 is more than you need in several lifetimes.
But then again, tab water here is excellent and also cool. So I don't see a reason why I should transport bottled water. It is much more convenient and cheaper.
The standard kirkland bottled water you see in the US in the standard 80 unit packs would run you $195,000 for that.
Municipal water would be about $1,500 for that + $150 filter.
It's a 99.2% cheaper option. Oh right and the 1.6 million water bottles you'd not have produced, right.
Many people drinking bottled water aren't drinking the cheapest in the supermarket - the recycling bin outside my flat is regularly filled with 1.5l evian bottles - they're £1 each in the local shop. At one bottle a day, that's ~35 person-years. Not common, but not insane.
However, my office has 17 people on my floor. If everyone here drank one bottle of it a day, we'd hit it in 2 years.
Even given expensive name brand water, a $50 filter cartridge only lasts for six months. That's $3150 for the same period. $50 replacing $25,000 is not grounded in reality.
To be honest, the argument for bottled water (I incorrectly thought) was more due to the convenience factor rather the taste. Clearly there are other points to consider.
That's not it. People don't drink tap water because they don't believe it's safe.
People who don't drink tap water usually have no trouble drinking it after it's boiled.
And non carbonated bottled water tastes just like tap water and you couldn't tell the two apart if there were from taps and brands you are not familiar with.
I think there are even pretty big differences, say, between the tap water in Santa Clara and the tap water in Milpitas, for example.
I mean, If your argument is that bottled water is wasteful, I'm not disagreeing, but I am saying that if you drink mostly water, even pretty small differences in the mineral content make detectible differences in taste.
absolutely. in the european cities where i lived, you could sometimes tell to which aquifer a household is connected. Depending on the neighborhood some need to clean their bathroom appliances from chalk twice as often.
That isn't to say that there's no taste difference, but that preferring a specific brand of bottled water is likely to be much more about the subconscious effect of marketing than something a priori more enjoyable about the mineral content of a specific brand.
But tastes vary so much that you couldn't tell random tap from random bottled.
Point being that while some places do have awful tap water, a lot of people just drink bottled or filtered water because they see people drink bottled or filtered water and copy that without even stopping to consider if their tap water is good enough or not.
https://www.ecowatch.com/bottled-water-sources-tap-253751064...
You might also have to modify the chemical makeup of the tap water itself.
Personally, I drink tap, but that's mostly because someone won't hook up the fridge (and nobody else in the family likes ice, for some reason.)
I find people buying $200 sneakers that offer no significant performance improvement over much cheaper alternatives to be 'inexplicable.' I find people buying $1000 phones when a $200 phone would perform literally 100% of a purchaser's tasks to 100% acceptability, to be 'inexplicable'. I even find people buying new cars 'inexplicable' given their hyper-depreciation - meaning a lightly used car is generally a vastly better value.
Of course I put 'inexplicable' in single quotes because these things are all completely explicable. Personal choice is a right of every person in a free society, and people have different views and values. And my examples understate the relevance of this as this choice is far more significant, and frequently personal, when it comes to what people consume than whatever stuff people buy for image crafting.
But we don't. Rather, we make the price of engaging in that activity extremely high. What would be closest to what you are advocating would be something like summary execution for all cases of homicide and rape, and no civilized country does that.
While I know that laptop and desktop systems have reached the point where pretty much anything will serve -- my laptop is over five years old and works for what I need -- I haven't found that phones have topped out yet. There is a massive array of features, including durability and battery life, where there is at least some potential to get more by paying more, and where I might actually use that.
I could possibly learn more by reading reviews and trying to read in between the lines, but as somebody who tries to upgrade rarely, I was content to pay more and hope that I'm actually getting what I need. And then try not to do it again for several years.
I fully admit to ignorance -- and that's your answer. I don't work with many cell phones; mostly, just mine. So you might well be able to recommend me an acceptable $200 substitute. But I bet somebody here would disagree, and I wouldn't know who to believe.
That's my experience. I can't tell you if it generalizes. (I can say that I waited until I got it for half price, which removes some of the sting.)
As a kid, here in the UK, most schools, public buildings and towns (in the street) had drinking fountains. Most town centres, shopping areas, tourist spots etc had them. Quite often they had a way to fill a bottle too. In the eighties they died out, and you'll rarely to never see one today. Why? They certainly weren't unsafe.
Bottled water producers seem to have managed to put people off our overwhelmingly safe tap water and drinking fountains. Now tap is seen as second rate somehow. Put in a vending machine instead, etc. Drinking fountains in schools and streets are long gone.
So now everyone can buy a Coke or bottled water, complete with single use plastic, and we mistakenly call that progress. The same people seem fine using tap water for tea, ice, juice etc.
Yet another bit of progress that baffles me. :)
I remember in the 80’s when travelling to Europe, whether you could drink the tap water was always a question to ask at the start of the holiday. 30 years later, we are now questioning our own tap water even though the rest of the EU and America have caught up, with water quality that is on par with anything that could be purchased in a bottle.
Tap water and bottled water in Utrecht are pumped from EXACTLY the same source. :)
Bottled water was found to contain microplastics.
However like with litter and graffiti in the streets, if people let even a small amount of cups & plates build up - then everyone seems to think it's time to dump their stuff in the sink too.
My dream home will have 2 dishwashers for that reason.
Rack 1: in the dishwasher being washed
Rack 2: in the cabinet of clean dishes
Rack 3: set out to be filled with dirty dishes
Cheaper than an extra dishwasher!
Guess it depends on the business.
Large companies I've worked at with several hundred people have multiple dish washers per floor, cleaners going round kitchens on the floor making sure cups/dishes are in the dishwashers, running regular wash cycles and emptying.
Small offices with a handful of people normally have people put cups in the dishwasher at the end of the day and turn it on when leaving.
I guess maybe it's the medium sized companies that have an issue? To many people for a end of day cycle to work, not enough people to justify multiple dishwashers/full time cleaner to keep things in order.
I don't know how bigger companies handle the issue, but the plan for scaling up seems obvious: have one person responsible for the dishwashers of each floor (or whatever division seems reasonable).
I'm smiling, but I'm also serious. I could go for such a system.
Seems like it can be applied to cups as well.
Is it really that bad? As in, so bad it justifies the amount of waste the alternatives produce? I'm sure it's not the worst thing you deal with on a daily basis i.e. door handles are pretty gross.
Indeed they are. I am probably weird, but when I walk into our building I have a paper towel in my hand to grab the door handle. In fact there are two door handles, one from the parking lot and one into the building, so I use one side of the paper towel first, then fold it in half with a clean side on the outside and use that for the building door handle.
Similarly at the cafeteria. I use a "clean hand, dirty hand" system there. My right hand gets dirty handling shared serving utensils, while my left hand stays clean handling fresh plates and such. And then before I eat I find a way to inconspicuously wash my dirty hand. Especially when I've gone to the salad bar and gotten icky sticky salad dressing on my dirty hand. Now that is gross.
Weird? For sure. But at the age of 67 my immune system is probably not as good as it was when I was 20-something.
It's been working so far. I seem to be one of the few people in the office who hasn't been out with a bad cold this year.
Yes, those paper towels are pure waste. I toss them in the compost bin, and I'm grateful to have used them.
Edit: if any of the multiple downvoters could mention what they objected to here, I would be genuinely grateful for the feedback so I can do a better job with my comments. Or if it's something I should have figured out on my own, I will do my best to sort it out. :-) Thanks!
Probably because your immune system is good?
If he successfully avoids touching common objects and surfaces this is probably the cause that he didn't caught the cold because that's exactly how you get it.
You make your immune system weaker by avoid germs. This system need constant update and training on germs and new germs. I don't really think the immune system get weaker by aging.Also, your skin, provided that you didn't cut yourself, will protect you from almost anything.
Their is a lot more things you should worried about like sick people who still go to work. Door handle will never make you sick...
Appeal to the building owners / maintainers for unplated, unpolished brass handles. The copper in brass (or other alloys of copper) is antimicrobial. Obviously the effect isn't immediate, clinical trials suggest it is immpresively high.
Keyboards.
"Timmy to George: That's like putting your whole mouth right in the dip! From now on, when you take a chip - just take one dip and end it!"
Outside those conditions, “disposable” coffee cups of all types lead to long-term pollution.
The PE lined cups can be recycled, the UK currently has capacity to recycle all the 2.5 billion cups we use annually.
You have to include all the steps of how it got from tree to your hand and your hand back into the Earth. There's still plenty of pollution in that process even if the object itself isn't part of it.
Like it's better from reusable cups? Basically will likely be ceramic, plastic, and metal from China, hauled across the ocean in some hugely polluting ship. No thanks.
I have a zojirushi mug that lasts about 2-3 years. I use it daily and keep it in my bag. It's been in 8 countries this year alone. It probably saves about 600 or so cups so even if it is 10 times more energy to build the canister I have it's still 98% less aggregate energy.
A reduction of 2 orders of magnitude is quite substantial.
The gains here from simply using a reusable cup are equivalent to say, getting a car that got 3000 mpg but had some minor inconvenience such as needing 3 minutes to warm up when you turned it on.
The whole process, as in the whole entire complete every step of the way process has to be looked at
Firstly, they require quite a lot of water and energy to produce and bleach, especially compared to a styrofoam cup.
Secondly, they are still wasteful. Using a glass cup costs less after about 20 uses.
Thirdly, biodegradable is being flung around as a solution, but it only is if you actually dispose of the waste correctly. if it goes to landfill, chances are it won't biodegrade in any reasonable timeframe. Also, biodegradable materials degrade usually into CO2, which is what we're trying to prevent from escaping in the first case.
A reusable glasscup breaks even in terms of energy vs a styrofoam at ~50 re uses. That doesn't price in the lifetime cost of disposing of the styrofoam, and glass is pretty much inert.
[0] https://terngoods.com/blogs/learn/cups-single-use-disposable...
Styrofoam for single-use products has been banned in NYC already.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33334994
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/27...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-12299-2
The EU has decided to ban throwaway polystyrene foam but I don't know if this counts for much as I don't know how much science was taken into account. There will be a comprehensive risk assessment by the EPA: https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-t....
My worry is when packaging EPS breaks down into tiny particles that could be inhaled. This cannot be great.
Also, not everything ends up in the landfill but ends up polluting our oceans instead. Unlike paper which will eventually decompose in the ocean, styrofoam will just pile up.
According to wikipedia, styrofoam doesn't essentially last forever.
Also, what's with the downvotes for asking a question? This place really seems to be going the way of reddit. Too bad... was a nice place to discuss the facts for a while. Apologies for making anyone question dogma.
That behavior doesn't scale and is unsustainable.
And that mentality leads to ever increasing pollution.
At some point, we're going to want to dig up the resources in a landfill. They're much more concentrated than in the natural environment.
The dogma is thinking landfills are one-way collection systems which grow without bound. As long as they're not leaking into the environment, they seem like perfectly reasonable ways of storing things we do not currently have a use for.
Doing this should be so expensive that the option wouldn't be considered. Or then they do it anyway and pay huge taxes for it, paying their share of the recycling / cleaning up.
There was one dedicated employee whose main job was to gather the cups and put them in the dishwasher and after they are cleaned, put them back in the cabinet. Dishwasher ran constantly and that employee kept kitchenette neat in between of cup handling. I think there were even two dishwashers so one can be loaded while the other is working.
The system was pretty much perfect. If people forgot to bring their cups back to kitchenette they were gathered by the cleaners at the end of the day from employees desks.
I'm part of an environmental group at my workplace, and one of our recent pilots was to get rid of single-use paper cups. It was crazy: despite ample clean ceramic cups being available --and indeed stacked on top of the coffee machine!-- many people defaulted to paper cups, sometimes to the tune of having 5-10 used paper cups on their desk at the end of a day.
Anyway, one of the issues that the pilot uncovered was that no-one was loading or unloading the dishwasher: it transpired that everyone thought it was someone else's job. This led to piles of dirty cups and a shortage of clean cups, despite each kitchen area having a dedicated commercial-grade dishwasher.
The long-term solution is education - so that people understand that we must all take responsibility for the cleaning together, and to train people how to use the dishwashers. The short-term solution is for each kitchen area to have a couple of colleagues who keep an eye on things.
I'm one of them for my floor, and I unexpectedly find it strangely therapeutic to do the dish-washing :)
You're not the only one!
Some people still use the provided cups instead of their own, but it helps.
If any workplace ever implements this - leave.
I'm not paying my engineers $200k a year to load a dishwasher for even a minute. We have cleaners who do it as part of their rotation, anything else and you're running a clown show.
To me, the bigger WTF is having to train people to use a dishwasher--hopefully that is something most adults can be expected to know how to do already.
Serenity is priceless for coders.
This is pricelessly succint. If there is one guiding principal for creating office space, this should be it.
You'd think, but in this case it is surprisingly unintuitive. The machine is a small high-throughput commercial grade item (takes just a few minutes per wash) which has little in common with home dishwashers. Further, its touchscreen interface is honestly really confusing. It took me a few goes and several wrong turns before I got it right, and this was with motivation.
> I'm not paying my engineers $200k a year to load a dishwasher for even a minute. We have cleaners who do it as part of their rotation, anything else and you're running a clown show.
I see your point, but it's means to an end. Our immediate goal, as a group of motivated employees, is to remove the paper cups. This is being done with the grudging acceptance of the team who actually run the building, who would probably be much happier if we stopped trying to change things, making their lives more complicated. Thus, while we can make the change we desire quickly and relatively easily, we must also handle the downsides of the change, to be successful - otherwise, it would be reversed. Long-term, having a dedicated cleaner do this would be optimal... but that's a change that would take far longer to enact.
I'm always delighted when I'm doing non-development things at work:
"Hey, I'm a part time dishwasher with developer salary!"
I don't think the environmental impact is that big if they use paper / cardboard cups instead. Those are properly reusable at least.
- The cup has to retail for 17 cents.
- It has to support a lid that is resealable.
- It has to tip over and not spill.
- It has to handle high temperatures.
- It can't alter the taste of the liquid inside.
- It has to be biodegradable.
- It can't catastrophically fail if the liquid is left inside for too long.
Seems like a tough challenge to me.
- Must NOT violate sanitization of the work area; cups provided by customers should not pose any health risks to workers or other customers.
- Should be durable enough to survive repeated visits
- Either the reusable cup must conform to a standard size, baristas need a way to measure liquids consistently without in-cup guides, or coffee could be sold by volume...
- Reusable cups should not introduce enough delay to appreciably disrupt the flow of customers
Disposable cups have the great advantage of being standardized by the company and solve a lot of these problems, especially the health problems. This is just off the top of my head, I'm sure I'm missing some other great points. This is a much harder problem than it appears on the surface; the devil's in the details.
I think the easiest win would be designating between sit down and take out customers. Sit down customers could be given porcelain or some other washable container. However this would increase labor costs for businesses so you don't automatically get a free win.
If I had brought my own cup, it would have been a 10¢ discount but to be honest, their mugs are better than mine.
But since it's a small shop I assume the 10¢ "fee" is to subsidise the dishwashing labour.
When I have looked it up its always simply looking at energy usage to produce the product when by far the biggest impact of our throwaway products is that they end up blowing around the streets or they fall in to the ocean. And even if you do put them in the recycling bin they mostly end up shipped to the 3rd world to be burned or thrown in the ocean.
Also even just looking about the energy usage, 70 times is quite low. A proper coffee cup lasts a lot longer than 70 uses. Really they don't ever break unless dropped.
I go to a coffee shop maybe once a year - perhaps I'm running late and didn't have time to make coffee at home, or I'm out with friends and they spontaneously suggest getting coffee.
Needless to say, I've never had a reusable mug with me in such circumstances! So customers with behaviour like mine are going to be getting a new mug every time, or not patronising coffee shops.
If one in every 70 customers is someone like me, switching to a 70-use-to-break-even cup would be a net loss for the environment even if you get 100% reuse among regular coffee shop patrons.
Is this assuming it goes into landfill afterwards? Does it look better if you use something more easily recyclable?
I think metal is a pretty good candidate: you can get it pretty thin, it's durable, keeps the coffee hot, light and easily cleaned. You just need to ensure that customers are not burning fingers or lips on the containers.
> However this would increase labor costs for businesses so > you don't automatically get a free win.
I think you could probably build relatively low cost cup washing machines, especially as you control the shape of the cup itself.
I think combined with reusable metal cups, it could help.
Yes, it does, and yes it does. However, getting the waste to the right place is also problematic. According to BBC[0] despite the fact that the cups are technically recyclable, lamost all of them end up in landfill anyway.
Interesting, what country are you from that doesn't do this? I can't think of a coffee place I've been to that doesn't, in Australia and Europe. Even McDonald's has porcelain cups for sit down customers.
Using disposable cups just needs to cost more and that needs to be obvious to the consumer. My local Aldi solved it - even though paper bags are only 5¢, everyone brings their own reusable bag.
Another commenter linked to a research paper [1] that includes this number. It's worth noting a few things:
* This was comparing ceramic mugs versus disposable cups. They assumed that reusable plastic cups would be more favorable (but did not opine on travel mugs, which are the more reasonable substitute among to-go customers).
* The study was done by Starbucks, among other organizations (may have a bias to make disposable paper look not-so-bad).
* Another study apparently showed 1,000 use threshold, but the author of the below-linked paper considered that study to insufficiently account for all of the costs of paper cups (deforestation, etc.).
full text:
* There has been a long-standing debate over the comparative energy-efficiencies of disposable products and reusable dishware. A study that is frequently cited is one conducted by Martin Hocking, a professor at The University of Victoria in British Columbia. Hocking (1994) reports that one would have to use a reusable cup as much as 1,000 times in order to justify the higher energy requirement during production. Yet this study omits the impacts of deforestation, transportation, packaging, and disposal; a more complete picture is needed to truly debate the environmental costs of disposable versus reusable cups. Starbucks teamed up with the Alliance for Environmental Innovation to more accurately compare the two, naming reusable products the more environmentally-friendly option (Alliance for Environmental Innovation, 2000). Their study found that using ceramic mugs in place of disposable cups would reduce resource consumption and pollution to an astounding extent, even including the impacts of manufacturing, use, and dishwashing.*
1: http://www.recyclingadvocates.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03...
I personally have a strong preference for ceramic (not enough to carry my own, but when I'm going to be in a place, I ask for a ceramic cup, simply because it is a more pleasurable experience than a to go cup)
The government could help a lot by creating a standard cup and mandating all companies have to use them.
This is a cultural problem. Women carry around handbags that are jammed to the brim with junk. Men don't generally carry handbags at all. There is no place to put a cup.
In Japan there are virtually no trashcans and people are culturally taught not to litter, so everybody has to carry their trash home with them. There is even a movement to disallow workers from using trash bins at work! When I worked at the local high school, I was forced to take all my trash home at the end of each day.
In that kind of environment, you naturally start to carry bags to store stuff until you can get home. Now I have a handbag that I carry with me everywhere. Usually it contains my wallet, my cell phone, a cloth shopping bag and any garbage I happen to have. It's pretty normal here, I think. If reusable drink containers were available, I don't think it would be long until all bags had "cup holders" in them.
But first you need to have a "take your trash home" culture. It's taken Japan decades to make that work. It's not impossible, but it takes time.
As an even worse real life example, if you buy a slice of cake and tell them you’ll be eating it in 5 minutes, they get out a laminated box for a slice that can be eaten in 2 bites, insert a plastic ice pack, wrap the box in a tight layer of plastic, tape it, then put that inside a plastic bag large and sturdy enough to carry 2 toddlers. Just for a slice of cake I’ll eat almost immediately. Explain to them you don’t need it, and they can’t comprehend that you’d eat 5 minute warmed cake and do it anyways.
America at least has reusable water bottles and fountains for them in many places. I’ve yet to see such a thing in Japan. People would probably not want to use it because they’d fear it’s unsanitary. Except for some EU countries, America is way ahead of the curve here.
Source: I'm one of the co-founders and CTO. :)
Apropos nothing much, my brother owns a coffee shop in suburban Chicago, and their clientele is mostly local; they have a whole collection of old mugs, which they let customers take with them and return later.
A bit of friendly advice: voting on HN is a stochastic process, and by the time I saw this comment, it had already been upvoted many times. This is one of the reasons the guidelines ask not to comment on voting (but not the most important reason).
I have trouble with this too! A sort-of-obvious trick: instead of discussing whether something should be downvoted, say you upvoted it and why. "I upvoted this, because every cafe I've visited fills third party cups too" says the same thing without litigating the vote, and also emphasizes the new information you're adding.
SNOOT MODE OFF!
I can foresee some problems with the plan. For example, you might get higher turnover because staff members are sick of cleaning dirty cups. It might take longer to serve each customer which would usually leads to less business. People who aren't aware that they need to bring a cup might leave empty handed and never return. It might be easy to do the occasional mug, but at lunch rush with a line of people it may be a different story.
I would be highly interested in seeing the results of an experiment where a shop only used reusable cups. I think it might surface problems that you might not think of. Not to say that it couldn't be solvable.
Having an attitude where you say "why don't they just do this" is typically not helpful. People are smart, they probably have already considered your solutions. If someone doesn't do something the way you think it should be done it doesn't make them stupid. Trying to figure out what you are missing when a solution seems obvious is a helpful way to see the world.
Some friendliness on the part of the establishment as well as good judgement on the part of the employees are enough to gloss over size differences in cups. Most travel mugs you see are going to largely conform to your typical to go cups, and nobody really bats an eye at filling a 14 oz cup and charging it as a 12 oz instead of a 16 oz, but if you fork over a 48 oz monster sized mug, you’re probably going to be charged for more than the large cup size and should expect it. How much more depends on the establishment, but at my old job I probably would have charged you for two 20 oz cups and not given a crap about the spare 8 oz, and if I had to answer to my boss, then most likely he would say he would have done the same.
It’s more important to cultivate good customer relations than to nitpick about exact cup sizes. You want repeat, regular customers giving you a constant revenue stream and you’re not going to get that by interrogating them on precisely how much coffee fits in their damn travel mug.
How? You only explain how cup size may be dealt with - what about the other cases?
> - Must NOT violate sanitization of the work area; cups provided by customers should not pose any health risks to workers or other customers.
Trained staff can tell customers to hold onto the lid, rinse the bloody mug and fill it with some coffee. The establishment trains the employees to understand how to handle 1. The customer 2. Their mug and 3. Keep the area sanitary.
> - Should be durable enough to survive repeated visits
Durable travel mugs exist.
> - Either the reusable cup must conform to a standard size, baristas need a way to measure liquids consistently without in-cup guides, or coffee could be sold by volume...
Answered more thoroughly higher in the thread.
> - Reusable cups should not introduce enough delay to appreciably disrupt the flow of customers
Dishes are a fact of life in food service. A customer is in charge of keeping their own mugs clean but employees can give them a quick rinse. For mugs that belong to the establishment, trained employees know how to 1. Wash dishes and 2. Load them into a dish sanitizer because they are professionals and it is their job. Health inspectors keep the establishment honest.
Even in Europe where they are actually trying, 26% of the glass is not recycled.
I kept mine, it's a nice souvenir of Cologne and I drink my coffee from it every morning :)
If you had to pay, say $10 for a proper coffee mug to have your take-away coffee in, but they'd buy back those same coffee mugs for the same price, that would probably solve the problem.
There is a catch though. Those mugs either stay near the stand they were sold from, or are taken as souvenirs. This works just fine.
With buying coffee on the go, people would take their mug along with them to wherever they are going, and you would have to hand it back the next time you visited that particular coffee shop or one of the same franchise. The risk of the mug getting damaged is much higher, and it is not nearly as convenient to carry a dirty mug around as it is to dispose of a used paper cup.
A lot would have to chance for such a system to work. Customer mentalities being one aspect.
After all, they're going somewhere, probably somewhere local, with their coffee. If they weren't, they'd stay at the coffee shop to drink their coffee. Or if they're not going somewhere local, then they're on a long journey (not that common).
I used to drink most take-out coffee when I worked just around the corner from the coffee stand, and went there every day, twice a day, for decent coffee.
That is woefully out of date. We now have the capacity to recycle all the disposable cups used in the UK. The collecting and sorting is where the effort needs to be put now.
https://www.dssmith.com/recycling/insights/coffee-cups-recyc...
Like plastic bags in supermarkets, can't one just put the onus on the customer to pay the cost of the container if they don't bring their own?
https://www.vegware.com/biodegradable-hot-cups/cat_4.html
The problem is that they require heat to activate the composting process, so need special bins that are sent to commercial composting centers, and there are none of those bins around, so they end up in regular garbage bins.
So is there any point in using them if they are not composted?
That link isn’t about a manufacturer developing better cups, it is a retailer spending ten years deciding which type of cup to use. The cup they chose, as far as I can tell from that description, is a standard double-walled PE lined paper cup which has been in wide use for many years now.
I heard some American friend that it's part of American culture to control climate: drinks must be piping hot in winter and full of ice cubes in summer. Everyone has to look like they are in a hurry and everything has to be BIG. Combine these things and to-go insulated cups become a cultural phenomenon.
Then again it's funny that in Western Europe alcoholic drinks to go are totally a thing and people love drinking beer on a lawn when it's nice outside. Again, cultural differences...
EDIT: I was thinking mostly about Italy, France, Spain, Benelux, but Austria has a pretty solid café culture too.
Having a coffee takes more than three minutes, especially if it's still hot. People don't necessarily have that kind of time in the morning. Or maybe they prefer to drink their coffee at a different place than where they purchased it.
And if you go to Southeastern Europe, it is everywhere, mostly the iced coffee variant.
Still fun. :) Hi from Croatia.
I'm also living in Germany and I don't remember being given a plastic cup - they are always made out of paper, except their lids. I think they should just ban the lids. I also saw a lot of discounted price offers for people bringing their own containers in take-away coffee shops
As an end user it's really hard for me to know what to do: is this single use hard to recycle plastic environmentally worse than ceramic mugs being washed or plastic reusable cups being reused maybe dozens of times if we're lucky.
Personally, I'd go for single use plastic / paper cups and high temperature incineration, but I have no idea if that's the right thing to do.
Not so fast! A ceramic mug takes a huge amount of energy to produce, so unless you reuse it many times, it won't break even:
https://terngoods.com/blogs/learn/cups-single-use-disposable...
Keep in mind that even a ceramic mug eventually becomes trash - with a far higher mass than paper/plastic cups.
Then of course there's the environmental impact of washing the cup, but I don't have any data on that.
I have no idea how the clay is obtained, transported to the mug factory, how it's turned into mugs, how the mugs are transported to shops and then to cafés and homes. I don't know how to include the detergent used to wash them, or the dishwasher. I guess we need to include the hot water, but how much of the plumbing do we include?
I also don't know any of this for the paper/plastic cups.
Using second-hand ceramic or glass is maybe a good thing to think about. No signalling of demand to a manufacturer, maximising return on the initial co2 cost... Perhaps not viable in every situation.
http://www.calgary.ca/UEP/WRS/Pages/What-goes-where/Plastic-...
They have to be larger than 7.5cm in diameter, eg. yogurt lids. So we are told to trash coffee lids, along with metal or plastic bottle caps, which also are too small. Other programs like Recycle BC can handle coffee lids.
And then Toronto accepts White Starbucks lids, but rejects all black plastic (!). https://mobile.twitter.com/cityoftoronto/status/978967494470...
Whereas all paper and plastic cups ARE recyclable here (and in BC), and it’s common for shops like Starbucks to have recycling for cups. Presumably they’re classified and shipped to one of the few batch pulpers. Toronto on the other hand says they can’t recycle such cups
It can get confusing.
I believe this really more of an Italian thing
You sit if it’s “leisure”, if it’s just a 5min pit-stop you stand.
It makes a lot of sense to distribute your consumption of caffeine over a longer period of time (say an hour) rather than consume it all at once.
I remember a friend of mine from Perth trying to explain me why a specific model of car was not selling well enough there because it was designed without a cup holder. It sounded very strange to me, but now I understand.
UK is part of European culture, economy, and history.
It's more about having a drink to sip on, when you're driving in your car to work, than about having or not having 3 minutes to sit in a cafe.
However, a lot of places will give you a discount if you bring your own cup.
What are you talking about? I've lived in the UK my entire life and this is completely and utterly incorrect.
I understand bottles are different, but I felt a bit of a need to mention what a bad idea the phone charger thing was. "Design by committee" is a pejorative for a reason. Also, knowing governments, they would do something crazy like mandate the standard soda cup to be small (see NYC).
The correct approach there would have been telling the industry to get their shit together and agree on one standard (and then mandate that, not "that or an adapter" like what they let Apple get away with), under the threat that otherwise they'll make a standard for them.
> In June 2009, many of the world's largest mobile phone manufacturers signed an EC-sponsored memorandum of understanding (MoU), agreeing to make most new data-enabled mobile phones marketed in the European Union compatible with a to-be-specified common EPS. All signatories agreed to develop a common specification for the EPS "to allow for full compatibility and safety of chargers and mobile phones."
> […]
> The original Common EPS memorandum of understanding expired at the end of 2012. The Commission reported at the time that all of the fourteen MoU signatories, "have met their obligations under the MoU." Eight of the original MoU signatories signed a 2013 Letter of Intent (LoI) to extend the 2009 MoU another year and, in 2014, five of those companies (Apple, Blackberry, Huawei, Samsung and Sony) again signed a second Letter of Intent, effectively extending the MoU through the end of 2014.
Without the legal mandate and adapter ban, they might as well have done nothing. To this day, there are two common connectors for Android phones (Micro USB and USB C), a different connector for iPhones (Lightning), and proprietary connectors for most feature phones.
Regulation delay is a feature here, as we don't need a new standard every couple of years.
I get switching can be a pain, but most people (the people regulation is crafted to cover) do not upgrade on the schedule of many tech enthusiasts. Consumers are also keeping devices progressively longer as time goes by.
I'm still happy with micro-usb, usb-a, hdmi, etc. for now. People do not switch out devices all at once, and it seems that forcing them to do so would create waste.
Lastly, how do they enforce it? Any one can go on amazon.com and buy a non-standard charger and a plug adapter, right? I would imagine those who do want things like quick charge would just buy the stuff.
The other, bigger, one there is KeepCup, but I don't have any experience with them.
The major issue is cost of course. Disposable cups are a cheap solution. As long as they remain cheap and there are not other compelling reasons, few companies are going to be making any changes.
I've heard this time and again here. It's worth reiterating, put the cost of the pollution on the manufacturer, then changes will occur.
A solution that would really work would be to band cities from exporting their trash to other cities without regards as to how it gets disposed. People would find a way to recycle. But I know it's wishful thinking.
Wait.
I’m not sure if this whole thing reduces any plastic or pollution...
Sending plastic to landfills at least keeps the plastic in one place away from polluting the whole world. It's not an ideal solution but it helps.
Yes, getting rid of plastic is best but containing it to one place even if you have to use plastic bags helps.
Straws are a hot button topic in disabled circles.
There are probably other issues. I'm not personally up in arms about it, but then I have yet to be directly impacted.
I'm not well versed on the straws issues. But let's talk about the California bag ban for a minute.
I've lived without a car for over a decade. I also have a compromised immune system. Disposable plastic bags are cleaner than reusable shopping bags.
I almost never buy trash bags. I use my shopping bags as trash bags.
I don't feel guilty about needing and wanting plastic shopping bags for convenience and germ control.
The bag ban presumes you can just stick your stuff in your shopping cart, take it out to the trunk of your car and drive it home. It is a burden for poor people, pedestrians and folks using public transit. There is no limit on rich people paying the extra 10 cents per bag to have all the bags they want.
It's based on an assumption that you have a car and money and will not give up your car. It actively punishes serious environmental activists actually willing to live without a car.
Getting more people to walk would do more good, imo.
I re-use paper grocery bags as bags for recycling and compost. We get plenty of plastic bags to use for the trash bin from random other sources, but if we ever ran out, they cost a few cents each if you buy a box.
Growing up in Mexico, we carried groceries home (a mile away and over a hill) from the market in baskets or sometimes backpacks, which was quite a bit less convenient than paper bags from a grocery store. I’m not sure why we didn’t use canvas tote bags.
But I'm extremely frustrated with the fact that no one seems to genuinely be interested in understanding anything I say on such topics. Even the best people here often come across as only asking so as to more effectively rebut my points, not to have their mind broadened or their understanding of the issues deepened.
For someone like me, that's basically life threatening. And the burden is always on me to prove something, to be diplomatic and respectful, etc.
I'm aware it's complicated by my story. I'm aware people find my story hard to believe.
But if you will excuse me, I think it's time for me to walk away from this thread.
It is very possible that we are all missing something integral to your overall argument, but since all of your individual points have been rebutted, it seems that this thing has been unspoken.
It occurs to me that perhaps it isn't your argument that is falling on deaf ears. It's your feeling. Often times, when making an argument, it is hard to separate the two. If only I felt like you, then I would understand immediately. It's a thing that is hard, if not impossible, to put into words and so try as you might, it seems like nobody is able to understand. Indeed it seems like nobody wants to understand.
I suppose if I try to use my imagination, I can imagine a scenario where I would feel the way you seem to feel. Of course, this is not likely to be the same feeling that you actually have. I hope you will forgive me in that I am probably unable to achieve that. In trying, though, I hope it will provide you the sense that I'm not against you and that even if I disagree with you, I care about your feelings.
There have been many times when I have worked hard to get a system that works for me. Sometimes it's been just at the edge of my ability to achieve that system. I'm not good at everything in the world, unfortunately. In fact, I'm extremely bad at some things and even if I try as hard as I can, I can't maintain a level that would be normal for another person. You could say I am disabled in that sense... but it's not a disability that you can see. Nor is it a disability that you can write down on an application for aide. Honestly, I'm just bad at it. Other people can't understand why and so rarely, if ever, make any allowances for me.
In that environment, I get my system going that allows me to just barely pass the level that is tolerated in society and I have pushed myself to the absolute limit to achieve that system. But then... society changes and they ask me to change my system. I want to break down in shame and cry out, "I *can't do it!", but I know that nobody will understand because it is a small thing for them. I don't know what to do because it is a burden I feel that I can't bear and yet nobody will help me.
If you are feeling that kind of thing, then perhaps I can understand. All I can do is to pass on my support. Probably you'll be surprised that a lot of people feel this way about certain things, but owing to the aforementioned shame, they are reluctant to talk about it (or often even admit it to themselves).
Even if I got this totally wrong, I hope it will make you feel better that somebody tried to understand.
I have a diagnosis of atypical cystic fibrosis. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume you do not. Germ control is a really, really big thing in my life.
It is very possible that we are all missing something integral to your overall argument
If you will read my comments more closely, you might realize that I'm usually not making an argument. It's other people who turn it into an argument.
My first comment was merely an observation, not an argument. The fact that most people here are framing it as an argument to be won is precisely the problem.
It is possible to talk to someone with no goal of proving a particular point. It's called conversation. When done right, it can add information to the system that improves decision making.
But that can't happen as long as the entire fucking world sees a different experience and different point of view as a threat to their precious status quo that must be shot down before it has any hope of taking root.
And now I invite you to try to understand my feelings. If you want it not to be "the whole fucking world" to shoot someone down simply because they have a different experience and different point of view, it's really got to start somewhere. You might keep in mind that my initial interaction in the conversation was an offer to try to understand your point of view.
When they introduced the ban on plastic bags in my country, it was more a ban on supermarkets selling them alongside your normal purchase, but you still can buy a stack of a few hundred in speciality shops, and just use that.
And if you forget to bring your own you can always buy the pristine reusable ones at a small cost.
At least here thats how a lot of people protested the ban for a few years - just brought they’re own plastic bags.
Maybe they are banned outright? No way to “smuggle in” a stack or something?
Most of the replies here are genuinely not interested in understanding the reasons this stuff is a hot button topic in disabled circles. I'm basically being grilled on the assumption that:
A. I'm too stupid to have thought of any obvious solutions being proposed here and this don't have actual legitimate reasons for my preferences.
B. I owe the entire world justification for my preferences.
C. I speak for and represent the entire disabled community on all topics, even ones I'm only passingly familiar with because they don't happen to be big issues for me in specific.
Bags aren't banned where I currently live. They are banned in California. I was living there at the time that they were banned. I was also homeless at the time. People are equally aggressively dismissive of comments I make about the bag ban being a burden on the poorest of the poor.
Poor people, disabled people and women seem to all be equally dismissed. And then folks just can't seem to understand the rage some folks in those populations feel about various things.
Which is like wow. Seriously?
Earlier, you made a post where the whole end chunk was about how going without plastic bags assumes the use of a car.
Then someone disagreed, with detailed examples about how it's not dependent on a car.
You interpreted this as condescension and not trying to understand you. What the hell? They were disagreeing with a part of your argument that wasn't about you at all, since you don't have a car.
They weren't dismissing you because of anything you are.
Also, being able to name a way a policy hurts some particular poor or disabled person doesn't mean it's overall bad for that group. For example: Plastic bags can hurt some poor people that can't easily use alternatives. But when bags aren't free then groceries themselves will be slightly cheaper. This will benefit a different subset of poor people.
Sometimes other people want to add nuance, too. Disagreement with part of what you say is not dismissing you.
I was thinking with my engineering brain for a simple and obvious solution to a simple and obvious problem. So sorry if that came out as a something dismissive.
But yeah looking from so far away it seams California has much bigger problem than plastic bags...
As someone who picks up groceries every week on a bike, a canvas bag is the way to go, purely from a practical, selfish standpoint; if you've ever carried home groceries, you know that plastic bags are probably the worst way to do it. They are hard to handle, prone to tears, and generally unreliable. On the other hand, a large canvas backpack or bag won't tear, can be used plenty of times, and generally works much better.
That plastic ban bag is a good thing -- if you want the convenience of a one time use bag, you should pay for it.
One group got lucky with allergies when it comes to one item out of millions. That's not a good reason to lock down the composition forever.
We should help them to compensate for the trouble, but the most effective way is to do it directly. It's possible to use less effort to make them come out ahead, while still keeping the overall benefits from the material switch.
Well it might be regional difference, but I don't remember seeing anyone just "sticking their stuff in their shopping cart, take it out to the trunk, and driving home." Who likes to have their watermelons roll over their basil? Everybody who drives to the local Trader Joe's either bring their own bags or buy paper bags.
There might be an argument against plastic bag ban, but I don't buy this one.
Also, even if you buy just three dozen eggs (which might be one of the cheapest things you can fit in a shopping bag), the cost of a paper bag (10 cents?) is already something like a few percent of the whole purchase. Sure it might be a burden, but it doesn't seem like an excessive burden, especially since you can reuse a paper bag for months.
When plastic straws were first introduced, people complained that they were too light and wouldn’t stay down in carbonated drinks.
That still doesn’t answer the question I raised in my post though. Where the standard paper straws wax paper?
Why is it silly? Untreated cellulose is extremely absorbent. Other paper utensils that will either hold liquid or be exposed to liquid are almost always treated with wax or plastic.
I've had some paper straws that were okay. But I've had many that were soggy within 15 or 20 minutes? Particularly straws in milkshakes. But I suspect doesn't help that I'm in Florida – the high humidity means paper straws probably have a higher moisture content than other places, just by virtue of being in this environment. So it takes less absorption from the drink to make them loose structural integrity and start to collapse.
Generally, they're single drink use. You might get a second glass worth if you drink fast.
I don't really notice a wax on them. If they happen to have any.... they might as well not bother.
I'm a born/raised Floridian, so I grew up on all the propaganda about ocean life getting tortured by soda rings, straws and other garbage. One of my transplant friends threw away some some soda rings without snipping them. I lectured/yelled at them for a good 15 minutes and showed them pictures of animals who got caught in the rings.
We give a shit about sea turtles and no one complains about paper straws out of fear of being stabbed to death by Florida man as he protects the sea life.
Also they apparently all use photo-degradable plastic since 30 years ago.
Plus, straws blow in the wind by decent and fair accidents.
In truth, I’m not opposed to the paper straws. They’re only really annoying when you’re at a bar. Alcohol seems to unwrap them faster than soda. I can let them sit in a non alcohol drink for a good 30 min before I notice an issue. Rum & coke... eh... 15? Just means I have to drink faster and drink more :)
"Petition creator Martin Reed started it a week ago, complaining the new paper straws dissolve as you drink them.
"Many social media users agree, with some claiming paper straws are "horrible" while one says it is like "drinking a milkshake through an empty toilet roll tube"."
I don't think most people want to taste straws. I certainly don't.
Works pretty well other than getting the ocasional sideways question about what the metal straw I keep in my bag is for.
Hygienic issues are the main concern I have with metal straws (e.g. when cafes have them for reuse). I'm assuming the one sold to you came with something like a pipe brush to run through it.
For public locations it's really going to be on the staff to clean this thoroughly as I doubt a dishwasher is going to be enough.
Wood for me would be worse in this regard, more opportunities for things to get stuck on them (or soak into the wood if lacquer fails)
I hardly think I am exaggerating by stating this concern. The development of one-time use cups (like dixie cups) was primarily to address sanitary issues. I can see lipstick on a glass, I can't see funky residue inside a straw.
I've discussed issues with soap use at some cafes that use reusable ceramics (as it can leave a residue and affect the flavor). One owner of a higher end cafe told me that they chose rather to sanitize their cups with a high temperature commercial dishwasher. This violates their local health code but is practically acceptable.
Anyways, I know it's possible to disinfect straws, but if it proves to be more complicated or requires a lesser known process (like boiling them), the odds if it not being done properly or not at all go up.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snappower/rain-straw-th...
I'd suggest the first place to start is to just question whether a straw is necessary. I think they're mostly a gimmick, apart from their use by some disabled people.
This one https://sg.carousell.com/p/coffee-bean-and-tea-leaf-collapsi...
I asked a disabled person with cerebral palsy about what he thought of paper straws. His answer: "I don't see the point in having a paper straw if the cup is already plastic"
The answer doesn't need to be that everyone uses plastic straws just to cater for a niche market.
There's no reason why the ban can't be put in place there are alternative methods that can be put in place that will meet needs.
It works perfectly and even holds up longer than a paper straw. And not only it is biodegradable, it is also edible.
It could also be prevented by coating it in a wax, like Carnauba wax, which will hold stable at up to 80°C and is chemically friendly to water, so McDonalds and friends would only have to lower the temperature of their coffee a bit.
20 yrs from now, I can see an greenwashing-ad of artisan/craft macaroni where ecological considerates up-cycle used macaroni-straws exactly this way. They will have counter-cultural names (unless labeling upcycled garbage for what it is becomes counter cultural). There will be media enchantment all the way (until bankruptcy), everybody yearns for a solution to the threat that too much noodles in the ocean pose to fish.
From memory, it's considered yet another imposition on someone who already has enough struggles to deal with. They might forget, etc. I can't remember what the argument is against straws being kept under the counter and only given on request.
- shopping bags - coffee cup - water bottle - straws
Who wants to carry all this garbage? Nobody. Give us all a break.
Genuine question, because everyone's life is different, is it really that big a deal?
I bring shopping bags with me when I go grocery shopping. They're more comfortable to carry than the disposable plastic ones. Often they just lie in the boot of the car where they don't take up much space. The backpack I bring to work is big enough to fit the handful of things I might buy on the way home.
I have a resuable coffee cup and water bottle on my desk at work, and I much prefer them to the disposable versions. Occasionally I buy a bottle of water or a coffee in a disposable cup, but whatever, I've still massively reduced the waste I produce from these things. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
In order to follow the movement I would need to carry a backpack of some sort, all the time and all places, or be ready to pay up. I would need to use probably more plastic bags than today, just to prevent spills and contamination from the coffee cups and straws. Gone would be freedom to change plans, leave home with no bags to carry, everything would become pre-planned. All of that for what outcome? Efforts of western countries focusing on cups and straws are a charade with no measurable impact; meanwhile some countries in Asia dump their waste into oceans by tons each minute. Our effort and resources would be better spent helping those countries improve faster, not trying to fix our 0.000001 % share. Most bang for the buck it’s called.
The level of your arrogance is astonishing. There is this group of people called the old people. Not disabled, just old with degraded fine motorics, weaker grip, shaky hands and a quivering jaw. Give them a metal or bamboo straw and they'll chew their teeth out. Remove plastic straws completely or make them at a hefty fee and you just made their life another bit harder.
> The whole system shouldn't change to accommodate edge cases that can be accommodated in another acceptable way.
I agree with you there. We already have waste collection and recycling programs, so there is no need to change the system by inventing pfand system for cups or banning plastics in some shapes and forms.
Once again, while you were focusing on straws worth of grams of plastic, others dumped tons of plastic into the wild. You are completely missing the point of the bigger picture and no effort on your side will make measurable impact, not to nature anyway.
Reusable and bendable typically makes the straw hard to clean.
Compostables need the free flow of air to break down. Because landfills are sealed to prevent leakage, even a cup designed to break down quickly doesn't get the air circulation it needs to do so.
For takeaway coffee?
Also doing what is possible, as to the impossible.
A documentary called The War On Waste [2] had a very convincing show on Coffee Cups. This has had a decent impact on the population from my perspective.
The mindset change is probably worth while if this thread is anything to go by. I was rather surprised that there are so many negative comments in this thread. There has been an obvious and substantial shift towards being mindful of your impact on the environment in Australia which is very welcoming.
This scene from Mad Men (57sec) [3] shows how previous habits are no longer acceptable behaviour.
[2] https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/the-chaser...
For example, Californian politicians introduced a ban on restaurants providing tap water without being asked.... while subsidising irrigation water for farmers that uses several orders of magnitude more water.
I don't know why they'd do that - maybe ignorance, receiving bad advice, cynical political posturing, corruption, or something else - but it's frustrating to see the political energy to solve a real problem being wasted on things that won't solve the problem.
With a lip around the rim I can't imagine them being any more flimsy than paper cups. The lid and sleeve could be 100% biodegradable since their time of contact with hot liquids is minimal, and the cups themselves could have a 25c/p deposit scheme to dissuade litter/promote collection of discarded cups.
They must be cheap enough to produce en mass for coke/Pepsi et al, and I recently learnt that metal cans are apparently much better for the environment than plastic since they can apparently be recycled nearly an infinite amount of times (easy to mechanically sort too) compared to plastic and paper that can only be recycled a handful of times before degrading too much for reuse.
Just looked on Alibaba and you can get reusable rigid steel cups for less than a dollar a piece in quantities of 1000. Seems like the price for single-use recyclable steel/ALU cups getting gown to the 17-20c (apparently what a paper cup costs) range would not be out of the question?
However lately it became more common (I live in Germany), more shops offer discounts if you bring your own cup, more likely that the person in front of you also has a reusable cup.
The solution I want to see, for both coffee cups and shopping bags - is reusable shared containers.
I don't want to have to bring my bags to the supermarket. It's not just a matter of laziness or forgetfulness - sure, sometimes I forget. But it's also a matter of ability. Sometimes I want to buy food on the way home from work, but I don't drive there and it's not really practical to bring my reusable bags every time.
Let me pay a deposit to take some reusable bags with me, then let me just bring them all back at once and get a refund.
Coffee cups are a bit harder since they need to be washed, but I'm sure there's a solution.
Well, we're learning that you have to deal with it at some point, be it the occasional washing or mountains of trash. People are going to have to just suck it up about reusing things. As long as it's safe, people's feelings about perceived ickiness will go away once the practice is normalized. And eventually we won't even remember how convenient it was to just throw things away.
It's not a luxury product solution, sure. But if I was traveling to a poor country and everyone was doing it, I'd consider it clever and just go along with it.
If you operate a coffee shop and don't want your customers to give you dirty coffee cups, make it easier for your customers to give you clean cups. That means having some kind of customer-facing sink or washing station towards which a sign directs customers to wash their mugs, regardless of whether they are already clean since we all know different people have different standards for cleanliness.
If you have co-workers who ride their bikes to work, we don't hem and haw over how smelly bike riders are going to be on hot summer days and how there's gotta be some alternative to them riding their bikes. Instead, we install on-premises showers. Bike riders are happy to take showers when they arrive. The showers are kept clean by the facility's cleaning crew. Everybody's happy. Why is this so complicated?
When visiting the US recently I found the recycled paper lids quite distasteful, in the literal sense.
For me, kicking the coffee cup/lid will be a bit harder than other forms of sustainability.
/s
There is no good reason for disposable food containers to not be biodegradable. Consumers can afford the extra 1¢ or whatever.
Many of the coffeeshops in SF use only compostable cups/lids.
So don't do that. If you can no longer put your trash on a barge to China, put it on a train instead and bury it somewhere in the enormous deserts that cover one third of the country.
I don't want to hear about how every single square inch of the desert is infinitely precious and irreplaceable, either. When the US needed to test nuclear weapons, they took a chunk of desert they didn't care about and nuked it. Just take another chunk, and put garbage in it! Maybe use the same chunk, it's been 70 years, it's probably fine now. Anyway, leave me alone.
Don't tell me it's my fault, for I just got here. I'll blame it on past people, maybe a peer. My life is just fine, and if others' are not, Well, life's just unfair, they deserve what they got!
Do it for children, you'll say, and I'll sneer, How could I harm someone that isn't yet here? I cant be to blame for what their life might be. What have future generations e'er done for me?
I'll mine all the minerals, cut down all the trees. Bespoil the air, then move on to the seas. What difference make it? I've earned what I've got, and nothing was given for which I've not fought.
And isn't this precisely what Darwin taught? May the best man win, and take all of the pot! I'm captain, o captain of this ship called home. But I'm tired and hot now. Please, leave me alone.
If we place landfills closer to population centers, then there is a much high opportunity cost for more productive uses for that land and greater care required for preparing the landfill so that contaminants don't leak into the water supply.
Either way, it would be better to reduce landfill space as much as possible.
More philosophically, we can't just keep living this "throw away lifestyle". There is a finite amount of land and resources. My generation is growing up facing a total climate collapse, and this way of thinking is the major reason why.
If cleaning up waste is an externality, can’t you add in the price of that cleaning into the thing itself, thus doing that would be an economic activity in and off itself.
For example a plastic cup costs 1c to produce, but 1 dollar to clean up. Well can’t you force the price to be 1.01 and be done with it. then if you clean up after yourself you can “get that deposit back” or if you don’t care for it - someone will, because it would earn them a dollar?
I think Germany has a system like that and I’ve heard that it works for them - both socially and in that it keeps things clean. Though I’ve not been there personally to verify.
They have another system at big beer festivals and beer gardens where people prefer to drink their beverages in glasses. Beer in plastic cups is just not acceptable here. These glasses have a deposit as well and you swap them for a clean and full one when you get a new drink and when you are done you get your deposit back when you return the glass.
This could work for coffee cups too. Just charge a dollar or so for a proper mug and simply put them in the dishwasher when people return them and give them a clean one. Only charge the deposit when they don't return one. Drinking from a proper mug is a superior drinking experience in any case.
If I understand it correctly, it just means that the surcharge needs to appear in the price listing, so I'd assume that customers will quickly learn to filter out that from their daily lives.
They keep your coffee hot for 6 hours, they don't seem to impart much if any of a taste on the coffee, they're easy to clean and they can really take a beating.
Ergonomically it's pretty well thought out. They have a switch mechanism that can either flip the lid open or lock it with a push of the thumb. It also works equally well for keeping ice coffee or water cold.
[1] https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/smkc
I would be interested in hearing what other people are using.
It's probably caused by us in part. The US ships a huge amount of trash to Asia. [1] In fact, recycling as we know it in many places in the US only works by shipping it to Asia. For example, my city had problems when China created new recycling processing rules, which altered the economics of its recycling program. [2]
Its been shown that shipping this stuff over the Pacific isn't a totally clean process. When trash goes to Asian countries, it can fall off the container ships. And the receiving country doesn't have any standards on processing. Impurities can be tossed to the ocean with the country's regular garbage. But yes, Asian countries count for the lion's share of trash in the Pacific. [3]
[1] https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/10/05/plastic-waste-ch...
[2] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/article/Can-sputte...
Though not being accepted by China is kind of funny because they tightened their standard for contamination so if western households actually put the effort in to correctly cleaning and sorting their recycling, the contamination would be low enough that it can still be sent. I've heard there's a problem caused by people being too keen on recycling and putting greasy pizza boxes and plastic toys in because they don't realize it's not recyclable. I'm not sure why the collectors don't enforce strict rules and stop collecting from violators.
In Sweden we have a model I like a lot, which is a modern, foldable version of a traditional saami drinking vissel called "kåsa": https://www.dentakit.com/foldingcup.html
They are often sold in hiking / outdoor shops etc. I'm sure someone could create a nice version suitable for take-away coffee.
Deal with disposable water bottles. And while we’re at it the proliferation of Amazon shipping boxes.
Around here (Northern Europe) (non-recycled) garbage has been burned for heat & electricity for a long time. Garbage is sometimes shipped between cities for this purpose (i.e. purchased)
I always assumed garbage was valuable in this way and that use of landfills was due to unavailable tech at the time. But perhaps the burning of garbage must be subsidized/have a high cost for processors...
Maybe charge a $5 or $10 cup deposit?
Instead of driving to a starbucks, they- make coffee at home/work?
Is the taste of starbucks that much better that we need to drive to it, use all these extra materials, in the name of our morning drug Caffeine?
I am especially poorly-positioned to answer these questions since I am not a coffee drinker, but it would probably be a good idea for policymakers to figure out how people will react to a policy like this. Otherwise we might end up with a poorly-target policy that either doesn't make things better (on net) or actually makes things worse.
But the coffee cup thing is just dumb, probably less useful than even the plastic straw crusade. There is close to zero actual biodegrading happening in landfills. Just tax the underlying soft drinks if you have a beef with cup consumption.
Also, first world problems.
Also, despite first world problems, first world has other more important problems that should be solved, like drug addicts, homelessness, and crime, maybe the people's council should focus on that instead of this?
Cleaning up waste costs money, money that the maker of the cup doesn't pay. Money that Starbucks doesn't pay. Money that the consumer doesn't pay. It's only cheaper at the cost of the person who has to clean up the waste. Plastic is heavily subsidized by not having to pay for its own cleanup.
I'd also take a position that homelessness is the real issue in SF and not disposable coffee cup usage.
EDIT: reading about the plastic bottle ban in SF[0], it appears that it's very limited
> The new regulations prohibit the sale of plastic bottles at events held on city-owned property. Additionally, government agencies may not purchase bottled water.
> Private businesses such as grocery stores and mini markets may continue to sell bottled water in the city. To date, little data exists on how the regulations have reduced overall plastic bottle use.
[0] https://theecologist.org/2019/apr/03/san-francisco-bans-sale...
Ditto, but I'm from Washington (just a hop and a skip across Oregon from California).
We can work on improving both problems as the same time quite easily.
I'm no solid waste expert, so I cannot comment on the utility of reducing disposable coffee cup waste in particular (as opposed to simply raising the price to consumers of trash disposal).
Most of the recycling claims by companies with the exception of aluminum is used as a way to make consumers feel better about using and trashing a product.