Hey Coffee Drinker, Ditch That Paper Cup

We have some amazing technology developing here in Canada. Homegrown high-tech whiz-bang -- Nobel Prize material, really.

This system is too good to be true: it can provide fuel, or be easily processed into one of our most versatile building materials; it can sequester CO2 to slow global warming; be harvested for food; increase ecosystem health and biodiversity by providing habitat for animals, birds, plants and insects; slow damaging storm-water runoff; purify water; and help remediate contaminated soils. The feedstock is free and abundant, and maintenance on the system is negligible.

Or, we can destroy trees for pulp to make paper coffee cups, which, after 15 minutes of use, we throw in the garbage can. Then, we pick the cups up with pollution-belching trucks and throw them in a dump, where they rot and create more greenhouse gases. To say this is not an elegant solution to beverage transportation is quite an understatement -- but what could we replace it with?

I have never really understood the delight with which coffee companies brand their paper cups. After all, we usually throw stuff in the garbage because it is low quality or broken. Take a walk down any inner-city alley and you will quickly get a picture of which mattresses sag too soon and which televisions are prone to burning out. A look in the garbage cans will tell you which coffee shops are serious about the environment, and which ones are causing serious environmental damage.

Disposable taste buds?

There are lots of problems with disposable cups. Up to 90 per cent of flavor comes from the aroma you inhale, so the non-recyclable styrene lids make your morning jolt about one-tenth as delicious. Paper cups are all lined with plastic to prevent sogginess and, if you want to keep your reproductive organs functioning, plastic is seldom considered a good marriage with hot or acidic liquids.

And of course, trees are elegant and amazing organisms that deserve better than to be pulped into coffee cups -- think Stradivarius. Forests generate value with an ease industry will never replicate. The unmeasured economic value provided by Canada's boreal forest for things like water filtration and air purification has been has been estimated at $93 billion. That is two and a half times as much as the combined economic value of the forestry, mining, oil and gas and hydroelectric industries in the boreal forest. This would represent eight per cent of Canada's entire GDP, and trees don't need a pension or health care. And yet we keep grinding them up -- North America uses 60 per cent of the world's paper cups, 130 billion of them per year. Those cups require about 50 million trees and 33 billion gallons of water, which could sequester 9.3 million tonnes of CO2 and quench 550,000 drought-stricken citizens of the state of Georgia, without even asking them to lower their ridiculous consumption rate of 166 gallons per day.

Easy solutions

So. Please stop. There is really no need to argue further. Paper cups are stupid.

Let's dispense the obvious solution quickly: buy a travel mug. I bought this one in 1997 and engraved my phone number on it in case I forgot it somewhere. But, if for some reason the same species that landed on the moon, climbed Mount Everest and eradicated polio cannot remember to carry a travel mug, we might want to have a few back-up systems.

A good place to start would be a deposit system, which has been very effective for milk, beer and soda bottles -- there is even a café in Toronto selling coffee beans in returnable bottles. I would suggest that a few stores or chains agree to co-brand metal travel mugs so you can return your mug to Joe's Café or Caffe Roma, whichever is more convenient. A cargo bike can redistribute mugs as needed if they start piling up in one store.