Week 1: No More Coffee Cups

Image: Dino De Luca / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No, I'm not giving up coffee. This experiment is not about torturing myself (or my children who notice when mommy does not get her cup of liquid patience). But I am going to go about coffee differently.

There was a time when I, working in an office, would buy a cup of coffee almost every day. Sometimes more than one cup per day. It usually came in a paper cup. It really didn't feel like I was doing anything really bad. I mean, one paper cup won't hurt anything right? Unfortunately, there were about a billion other people with my paper coffee cup habit thinking the same thing.

Here's the problem:

• In 2010, an estimated 23 billion paper coffee cups will be used. It takes 9 million trees and enough energy to power 77,000 homes to make these cups.
  
• Paper coffee cups are lined with a plastic resin called polyethylene, so they can hold hot liquid. With this coating they cannot be recycled. All of these coffee cups end up in landfills.
• What's worse, in the landfill the paper cups decompose and release methane, a greenhouse gas that traps even more heat than carbon dioxide.
  
• Most coffee cups are not made of recycled paper, as recycled paper is typically not strong enough to hold liquid.

(See http://www.sustainabilityissexy.com/facts.html for more fascinating and terrifying figures)

Suddenly, my coffee has a bitter aftertaste.

My solution: Well, for starters I'm going to make my coffee at home and drink it from a mug. I've been doing this for a while now to save time and money, and I enjoy it just as much. On the weekends, I will still treat myself to a fancy coffee. But I will do it in a reusable mug. One study found that I'll have to use my stainless steel mug 24 times for it to be more environmentally friendly than paper cups. That's 3 months of weekend coffees for me.

There is a paper coffee cup sitting on my desk right now. I bought it this morning, and I plan to kick the habit today. I'll keep the coffee habit though.

Money saved*:
$624 per year
(Making my own coffee vs. 3 lattes and 2 coffees out per week)

Resources saved*:
350 cups per year
140 pounds greenhouse gases per year
21.6 pounds of solid waste per year
one tree every seven years

*My husband is making his coffee at work, and joining me with reusable mugs, so these numbers all double for our family.


Sources: http://www.edf.org/documents/523_starbucks.pdf p.25 Report of the Alliance for Environmental Innovation and Starbucks 2000 (with the Environmental Defense Fund) (Although this report is a good estimate of the carbon emissions of the average coffee cup, the current Starbucks coffee cup has a smaller carbon footprint because Starbucks has added 10% post-consumer recycled content to it cups.)