The Truth About Coffee Cups and Nothing But the Truth
Do you make a frequent trip to your favourite coffee shop [insert emporium of choice here], but feel somewhat guilty about the disposable cups you might use each visit, only to be pitched and unrecycled?
This is an AWESOME way to recycle used coffee (paper) cups!
http://www.instructables.com/id/Coffee-cup-sphere-lamp
I’m a huge fan of saving Mother Earth, in every way I can, even if it means saving each and every coffee cup that per chance I might use (I tend to reuse my stainless mug for hot drinks).
http://www.instructables.com is a wonderful website for ideas, tips and tricks.
Here’s a startling and scary fact from an article put out by Dalhousie University [Halifax, Nova Scotia]:
“In 2005, Americans used and discarded 14.4 billion disposable paper cups for hot beverages. If put end-to-end, those cups would circle the earth 55 times. Based on anticipated growth of specialty coffees, that number will grow to 23 billion by 2010 enough to circle the globe 88 times. Based on hot cup usage in 2005, the petrochemicals used in the manufacture of those cups could have heated 8,300 homes for one year.” WOW. A frightening statistic indeed!
Did you ever wonder why the coffee giants in this world haven’t hopped on board the Green bandwagon / train?? Turns out, that there have been almost no eco-friendly alternatives (and I say almost because, at our wedding, slaDE and I bought compostable coffee cups for our guests to use, from a company called Green Shift™ out of Toronto, Ontario). In fact, ALL of our dinnerware at the potluck wedding feast was biodegradable (corn or potato starch based), with composting stations set up everywhere = NO WASTE.
In a normal conventional hot beverage cup, its inner surface is lined with a petroleum-based plastic (polyethylene) to prevent leaking, and thereby making it non-recyclable or compostable. This fact alone makes me wonder what interaction there is when a petroleum derivative is heated up = ingesting refined hydrocarbons.
