Hey everyone, I am Eric Rochow and this is Real World Green. Today's episode, really simple. How many of these do you use in a day, one, two, maybe even three. I actually sometimes get coffee in the paper cup. Yes, Eric the green guy even uses paper cup sometimes. I try not to but I am sure like everyone else it happens. But these things, these are really quite wasteful, the paper, the cardboard sleeves, the plastic top.
So what's your alternative? Go look around your office and see if there are some complimentary plastic coffee mugs around. I am sure one of your vendors or someone gave your office a bunch of mugs at one point that might have a company name on it or something. These, you can reuse them, just rinse them out and take them back. You just hand it to the guy and they fill it up. A lot of times, they give you a discount if you have a reusable mug because they don't have to pay for the plastic or the paper of a new mug or go out and get yourself a ceramic mug.
There is some debate out there about the energy needed and the waste created by making a ceramic mug or making a plastic mug. But if you have already got one, just go ahead and use them. You will eliminate a bunch of these and you won't be spilling coffee everywhere there. Also, if you are using a paper cup you can reduce your impact by using that cup multiple times. Take it and rinse it out and then bring it back to your coffee place. You can reuse it. The plastic top adds waste, the cardboard sleeves adds waste. You can reuse all of that and you will be a little more green. This coffee has been sitting around since this morning but it's still good.
You might not know this but coffee cups are not recyclable. The paper cups they are coated with a special coating on the inside to keep the hot liquid from leaking out because it is paper after all and because of that you can't recycle it. So when you throw this, coffee flying, into the paper recycle bin at your home or your office, some guy at the paper recycle mill has to pull the paper cups back out because they won't work.
So again, reuse your paper cup. You can reuse this three four times. Just use a ceramic mug or a plastic mug. Don't go and buy one of these. They have got to be laying around somewhere. If you don't have one, ask one of your neighbors, ask one of your office mates, I am sure that these are around. Well buy one at a tag sale, recycle, renew, reuse the whole thing.
There is a new kind of touchy-feely green website out there called idealbite and from that site I learned that if you have one cup of paper cup coffee a day for a year, you are adding 22 pounds of waste to the waste stream and not even considering that when you use this and when you throw it out you have to pay, well you don't have to pay for, but there is gas used, to truck this to the land fill, the land fills gets filled, all sorts of stuff like that.
So I am sure you have got some of these laying around. There are not always the most beautiful things but they work. Let's fill it up. So they even have like the slidy lids so you don't spit on yourself in the car or if you are in your office, just use a ceramic mug, wash it out. It's a good thing. So to sum this up, if you are using paper cups, reuse them. Rinse them out, take the top off, put the top back on. Bring a little card body holder back with you, when you go back to the coffee place, otherwise they are going to give you another one.
By the way, the card body holder thing is recyclable. Look around your office, look around your house, ceramic mugs or the plastic mugs, they both work really well. Don't go on buying new ones because I bet they are laying around somewhere. If you don't have some, ask your office mate or find them in a tag sale, find them at a stoop sale.
So that's Real World Green for this week. Send us e-mails, leave some comments on our site. I will leave a link to some bit of a discussion about the manufacture of plastic mugs and ceramic mugs versus the impact of a paper mug. It gets pretty deep, but I think in the bigger picture just trying to reduce your impact, reduce your use of throwaway containers like this. You are making a difference, I am making a difference, I could talk, I could make a difference. Alright, I will see you later. Thanks for watching.
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