I was in New Orleans a couple weeks ago and ended up at a local jazz club called Snug Harbor. There was a lovely trio of women singers, accompanied by a piano and trumpet, performing that night. One of the women was drinking out of a thick 40 ounce, neon pink, barbell-shaped plastic cup, with an equally slaptastic straw. It wasn’t a particularly unusual sight, after all, even though it wasn’t Mardi Gras season. But after taking a sip, she hoisted it up like a trophy, lamenting, ‘I was in another city last weekend and they didn’t have any ‘to-go’ cups like we do here! What’s up with that?”
Indeed.
The poor woman had to drink her alcohol at the bar. Without leaving.
It was a pretty comical comment, but it got me unnerved. Does she realize how much waste is produced from those giant plastic cups, created purely for the sake of soiree-savvy convenience? Most environmental enthusiasts know the damage plastic does to the environment. When not recycled, plastic dominates our landfills—for 50-80 years, to be precise. It’s not a fun thought.
But before I could go too far on my newly-green-inspired-moral-high-horse rampage, I suddenly realized just how guilty our own city of Seattle is at this ‘to-go’ cup concept. While perhaps not alcohol-inspired, we definitely enjoy disposable containers. In our world of convenience, coffee, smoothies, or other iced beverages are all served in plastic. Even the hot drinks are incriminating, sporting a plastic lid over their paper cup. Not only that, but the paper cups are rarely recycled and most can’t because of a petroleum-based lining. That’s to keep our drinks from leaking, folks!
One piece of good news I read about while trying to make sense of this hypocritical madness, was that Tully’s had come out with a completely biodegradable cup. Check it out at www.tullys.com/menu/green.aspx. I also just noticed, while at the Starbucks on 65th and Phinney, that they have new bins for composting their paper cups. So it looks like Starbucks is also up-and-coming with the compost-able cup. Granted, the best alternative is to carry a reusable cup or container, but it’s nice to know that our multitude of disposable coffee cups out there are becoming biodegradable. Don’t drink coffee? Check out Tom Watson’s October 5th blog for a more detailed examination of bottled water and better alternatives.
A friend reminded me the other day that there are 2 additional steps in the process of recycling: Reduce and Reuse. I nearly forgot that Recycling isn’t the only R in the alliteration. If we don’t follow through with reusing our cups and reducing our waste, then recycling will be like a kid with two left feet---it’ll just keep running in circles. Once we get our friends and family hip to reusing their containers, it’ll be a quicker movement towards less waste. I can only hope that the phrase above will take a different turn in the near future. This may be what we hear instead: “I was in another city last weekend and they didn’t use biodegradable cups like they do here!”
What’s up with that?