Starbucks Trash Talk

Coffee Cup Trash Talk

Chances are good you’ve had a cup of coffee to go a time or two in your life.  Actually, according to statistics that recently stated coffee shops to be the fastest growing segment in the entire restaurant business and that Americans are now drinking 400 million cups of coffee a day, it’s likely that you’ve had a cup to go more than once or twice.  To put it more bluntly: if we, as Americans, consume 400 million cups of coffee, then we are consuming some 146,000,000,0000 (146 billion) cups of coffee per year. Now, put that in terms of coffee consumed in disposable cups, and we can get a pretty sickening figure. According to the Recycler’s Handbook, we throw away 25 million Styrofoam cups a year.  (Also, Styrofoam happens to be the worst, because they never break down, which means 1,000 years from now, your coffee cup from this morning will still be sitting in some landfill.)

Not scared yet?  Consider these numbers:

Projected for 2010:

Number of disposable cups to be used in the U.S. alone:      23 billion

Tons of wood consumed for those cups:                                1.4 million

Number of trees cut down:                                                     9.4 million

BTU’s of energy used:                                                            7 trillion

Gallons of water used:                                                            5.7 billion

Pounds of solid waste created:                                               263 million

(Data retrieved from: Sustainability Is Sexy)

Those figures are staggering, any way you look at them.  The main problem lies in the fact that your ordinary coffee cups are never made with recycled paper.  This primarily has to do with FDA regulations that don’t allow for recycled paper to be in contact with beverages.  Secondly, recycled paper doesn’t hold up well to liquid, especially hot liquid.  The third problem: coffee cups are covered in a thin plastic called polyethylene, which is great for keeping your coffee cup from leaking on the way from Starbucks to work, but not so great since polyethylene isn’t recyclable.  So, not only is the cup itself not created with recycled paper, it’s also not recyclable when it’s used.

The future looks bleak, doesn’t it?  It doesn’t necessarily have to.  Starbucks is, right now, working on creating 100% reusable or recyclable cups, and since they’re one of the leading contributors to accumulating wasted cups, their change alone could drastically improve those figures.  And, you can do your own part.  At the very least, stop buying your coffee in to-go-cups.  Ask for a coffee mug if that’s an option, or start taking your own.  Some coffee shops will even give you a discount for bringing in your own thermos, and if they don’t already have that in place, see if you can speak to the owner/manager about starting an incentive program. 

And remember, you can always make your own coffee at home. This makes things easier and better for recycling all around.  You can use fair-trade green coffee, pour the coffee into your own mug, and then recycle your coffee grounds out in the backyard. 

 Photo credit: © GreenvilleDailyPhoto.com

 Author Tara Alley is a freelance writer who enjoys blogging and writing about finding creative ways to live more sustainably.  You can follow her on Twitter @hopesiempre.