And consider how much energy it takes to manufacture a MUG.

And how much energy it takes to grow coffee beans and transport them to destination of consumption and grind them and boil water to make a cup of coffee

And consider the effects growing coffee rather than food for local consumption might be having on kids starving to death.

In fact you had better give up coffee altogether. Kids are starving to death just so you can get your drugs high. You're addicted to caffeine. Its time you switched to drinking just fresh rainwater straight out of your own hands formed to make a cup.

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but I especially hate styrofoam cups, which is what my place of employment uses. It makes me cringe when I see someone who works in my building walking around with a disposable cup AND plastic lid every single day.

Even easier than coffee shops using real mugs, how about working folks bringing a couple of real mugs to keep at the desk? Not only does it eliminate "plastic coffee taste" but it adds a little character to your desk! I have several handmade mugs that my nieces have painted for me, as well as some I've picked up along the way with cheeky comments on them. Maybe we should appeal to people's sense of style with this one.

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When I wanted a refill of a Starbucks beverage I wanted them to reuse the paper cup I had been using. I was told they cannot do that and instead gave me a new cup. Well, I tried going green.

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Wine bottles and other glass I used to look at as being wasteful, but then it occurs to me, it's just sand, and there's a lot of that.
The production requires energy like any other production and unlike it's plastic counterparts it doesn't have potetially deleterious effects on human and environmental health.
Unlike paper I suspect it easier to harvest sand in a way as to minimize disruption of ecosystems.

Paper products are useful and convenient, and who doesn't like TP.
Before using them in a wasteful manner it's good to consider the effect such action may have on our interconnected planetary environments.

For ex.) if using a paper towel why not using a piece that's size is suited to the task, not a big square foot section just because that's how it is perforated?

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The food industry takes in over $150 billion every year--more than the auto, steel, or oil industries. This industry is dominated by a few, giant multinational corporations, who possess extensive political control.

Multinationals are buying more land. A study of over 83 countries reveals that just over 3% of landholders control about 80 percent of the farmland.

The Worldwatch Institute has released a remarkable report entitled Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment, which lists nation after nation where food deprivation has followed the switch from a grain-based diet to a meat-based one.

Most of the nations that now import grain from the United States were once self-sufficient in grain. The main reason they aren't is the rise in meat production and consumption. In Taiwan, for example, per capita consumption of meat and eggs increased 600 percent from 1950 to 1990. With this change, vastly increased amounts of grain have gone to livestock, raising the annual per capita grain use in the country from 375 pounds to 858 pounds. In 1950, Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990 the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used.

In mainland China, the situation is similar. Increased meat consumption has meant less grain available to feed people. Since 1978, meat consumption has more than doubled, to twenty-four kilograms. The share of Chinese grain fed to livestock rose from 7 percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1990.

Beginning over 300 years ago, the Western colonialist powers established the plantation system in their subject lands. The plantation's sole purpose was to produce wealth for the colonizers - tobacco, rubber, cotton, tea, coffee, cocoa, etc.--all of which had little or no nutritional value. The name subsequently giver to them, "cash crops," is quite appropriate.

Cash crops became established in world trade, so that even after their emancipation from formal colonial control, Third World countries were "economically hooked" on these crops as their only means of survival. Coffee, for example, the second most valuable commodity in world trade, is the economic lifeblood of fourteen developing countries. Coffee symbolizes millions of acres of agricultural land in a hungry world.

In Central America, where over 70% of the children are hungry, 50% of the land is used for "cash Crops" (such as lilies). While multinational corporations use the best land to grow their cash crops (coffee, tea, tobacco, exotic foods), the natives are forced to use slopes and eroded land on which it is difficult to grow food.

Since 1960, the rumble of landless people in Central America has multiplied fourfold. American aid goes to prop up Latin America's livestock industry. According to economist Bruce Rich: "No other single commodity in developing countries has ever received such extraordinary outside support."

Nor does this support benefit the impoverished. Over half Of Latin America's beef production is exported, and the rest is too expensive for any but the wealthy to purchase. From 1960 to 1980 beef exports from El Salvador increases over sixfold.

Meanwhile, increasing numbers of small farmers lost their livelihood and were pushed off their land. Today, 72 percent of all Salvadoran infants are underfed.

Oxfam, the international charity, reports that in Brazil huge cattle ranches take up some of the most fertile soil in the whole country, yet 60 percent of Brazilians are malnourished.

Oxfam estimates that in Mexico, 80 percent of the children in rural areas are undernourished, yet the livestock are fed more grain than the human population eats! The livestock are exported of course, to satisfy the developed nations' craving for cheap hamburgers.

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how cattle and other such creatures got the grain to eat 100 or 1000 or 10,000 years ago? Oh they don't naturally eat grain but grasses?? Hummm

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...is silly no matter what sort of cup you put it in.

Hmmm, three of those/week = half a tank of gas, 12/month = property taxes on a nice home in most markets.

So, for those who aren't aware--they sell these giant tub of grounds at your local supermarket. Sure, you have to wake up a little earlier to brew it, and pack a cannister if you want your afternoon fix, but is a luxury of having someone pour your coffee for you worth exacerbating the newly minted "gas crisis", or "mortgage crisis"?

I challenge those who get to the end of the month unaware of where the money went: pour your own joe, into a ceramic or stainless steel travel mug.

*caveat: I drank navy coffee (also known as turpentine) for five years, so I'm probably not as particular as your average starbucks fan. But I guarantee their coffee budget dwarfs mine...which leaves more money for old sipping scotch. :)

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I always carry a travel mug. But travelling with it, it is rejected at numerous places, especially airports. Recently at Baltimore and at Midway every employee of McDonalds and several smaller chains refused to fill it. I had to accept a styro cup, pour my coffee into my mug, then hand back the stryo cup for disposal. It's company policy but no one could tell me why. I didn't want to get surly with clerk, it's not their fault, but the fact that no one questioned or could explain the policy is disheartening.

Anyone know why they are forced to use disposables?

I would never buy cofffee or water if you could still carry liquid into airports. But with hours of transit and hours of sitting between flights, you're stuck.

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It's so stupid to make paper out of wood. Inefficient as hell, wasteful of space and time and energy. So stupid it boggles the mind to think about it.

Hemp is much better for paper. Lots more per acre and you can harvest it every year, even twice a year! Unlike trees which take a decade or more to be ready to harvest.

Land of the Freely Wasteful,
Home of the Bravely Blockheaded.

I sometimes wonder what my Revolutionary Era forebears would think of today's lame policies.

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Keeping a travel mug in the car seems like an easy enough thing to do. Why not a travel plate, eating implements, and napkin, too?

But when you give up your car and start walking, bicycling and using public transport, lugging that mug becomes burdensome.

Obviously the car is a bigger environmental problem than the paper cup. I am tired of people giving me a hard time because I travel light, by foot and bus, and don't bring the heavy environmental hardware.

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These paper products are made from low grade pulp wood, most people know this.

When a site is logged it only produces some saw-grade wood. The rest goes into pulp. The pulp logs are typically the genetically poor trees so they can't be selectively logged and 'just left there' because these poorer genetics would then re-populate the forest.

Like it or not, clear-cutting is the best way to harvest these forests. This generates pulpwood that NEEDS to be used. What is the world supposed to do with all that logging by-product ? This low grade wood has to find a home somewhere.

I personally think this is one of the biggest impediments to the legalization of hemp for pulp-replacement products. Such movement would cripple the timber industry by taking away a large profit stream from it's pulp processing.

Lousy system, but it's the one we got.

We should at the very least stop bleaching and painting our paper products ....

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Anybody know what percentage of paper cups out there are from recycled materials? Anyone...?

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How come people are so slow to change? For the better?
I quit using take-out dishes years ago and to still see the mighty innorant north american usless eaters consume everything like locus only leads me to keep beleiving that the so-called master races are nothing but shadows of what they THINK they are. Anyone knows that to shit in ones own backyard will only pollute thier land and it will rebell and not support life. So just like the first commentor who I hope does not really beleive in the drivel that they wrote and it was done tounge and cheek or........ is the first comment more like the way every american thinks?
Its like yeah we stole it and were sooooo tough that we can do what ever we want.
What a sick place my land has become and the real joke is that you usless eaters turn around and point thier fingers at others (cause thats the way you have been taught)all the while we know and KNEW we could have done this waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.
Ya reap what ya sow.
Peace to all the ravens!

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I'm sold. I think I will stop using paper cups to hold my coffee. That's 365 cups saved a year, just for me.
I do not, by the way, use plastic lids on my cups of coffee. I agree that the aroma is very important to the taste of the coffee. And in any case, who knows what chemicals in the plastic are dissolved into the hot coffee passing through that little hole in the lid. Yeah, I spill coffee on myself from time to time. But that is nowhere close to as hot on my skin as what we will all experience with the coming global-warming.

Now, I hope that the soapy residue rinsing down my sink's drain when I wash the travel mug doesn't pollute even more than the paper cups did! I doubt it will. But you never know.

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We'll quit throwing so much stuff away just as soon as we RUN OUT of stuff to throw away.This'll probably happen much sooner than anyone anticipates, so don't worry; be happy.

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The real goal should be to completely eliminate the packaging industry, which is needlessly destructive. Everything that needs to be sold can be sold in bulk, as it once was. People should bring their own cups, bags, and containers to stores and shops, not consume more of the Earth by demanding packaging or disposable bags.

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We sell our beans in cans and people can refill any time they want! No waste of a 1lb bag! I love the idea of no cups, so any other great ideas for us? We are a roaster in Northern California.

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