Bring Your Ever-Lovin’ Own
Photo by Davies & Starr/Getty Images
Even the most casual of readers here should know how I feel about disposables. Seeing people use them PISSES ME THE HELL OFF1, for a myriad of reasons. (And lucky for all of us I didn’t take a losing spin in the Roulette Wheel of Life and turn out a homicidal killer. This is why I don’t drive—I’m the leading candidate for Hummer-induced road rage.)
One of them, as the fabulous Anna of Bring Your Own so succinctly puts it, is that paper cups do grow on trees.
According to an internal Starbucks memo, if 50 customers a day in every store used reusable mugs, the company would save 150,000 disposable paper cups daily. “This equals 1.7 million pounds of paper, 3.7 million pounds of solid waste, and 150,000 trees a year,” the memo continues. (Starbucks was recently lauded for developing a paper cup with 10 percent post-consumer recycled content, but as Siel so often is with the Mermaid, I’m completely underwhelmed. How about really and truly upping that ante, you scurvy scallawags?)
NASA pipes in with this nugget: After carbon emissions caused by humans, deforestation is the second principle cause of atmospheric carbon dioxide, through the burning and cutting of about 34 million acres of forest each year. In fact, deforestation is responsible for 25 percent of all carbon emissions entering the atmosphere. We are losing millions of acres of rainforests annually, each equivalent in area to the size of Italy. While the destruction of tropical forests alone is upchucking hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, temperate forests, which account for an absorption rate of 2 billion tons of carbon annually, are being lost at a rate of 10 million acres per year just in Siberia. Do I even need to bring up habitat destruction and biodiversity loss?
Besides linking to one of those worth-a-thousand-words photos, Anna also helpfully lists some frightening stats:
• Plastics: Show me a square mile of ocean and I’ll show you 46,000 pieces of plastic (estimated average);
• The Death Toll: Over 100,000 marine animals die every year from plastic entanglement;
• Shopping Bag Frenzy: The U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually, requiring an estimated 12 million barrels of oil. Less than 5 percent are recycled.
Plastic containers and bags end up in landfills, where they photodegrade after a millennia into toxic offal that leaches into our groundwater and soil. Landfills also produce methane, a greenhouse gas that traps our increasing carbon dioxide burden within the atmosphere, resulting in, yes, that sleeper hit global warming. Now scroll down to the bottom of this site … way down: that spinning number is the number of plastic bags consumed in the last six months.
Now both Anna and I could continue to quote numbers until we’re blue in the face, but the fact is it doesn’t take very much additional effort to simply bring your own bag or mug—even your own tupperware for takeout lunches.
At the very least, you’ll help bring down my soaring blood pressure.
1 The hub can tell you I nearly had a coronary on the plane. Thank God Japan Airlines on the flight back used actual silverware.
Amy Stodghill said,
June 15, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Amen sister! I can’t tell you how much ‘to go’ disposable packaging really, really, bugs me. I mean, is it REALLY necessary to double cup, with a sleeve, 500 napkins, a wrapped plastic straw, in a paper bag, in a plastic bag…. I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it!
Whew - alright now that I’ve got THAT out of my system - part of the problem too is a societal/cultural thing. At what point did we deem all of this stuff necessary in order to leave the deli/coffee stand/restaurant? Wouldn’t it also make sense for the deli/coffee stand/restaurant to NOT give out so much of this stuff, just for the sake of the bottom line (a few less napkins per person would mean they wouldn’t have to buy as many as often right?)
Anyway - that’s my .02. I gotta to go wash out my stainless steel coffee mug now…
Kathy said,
June 15, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Me and CB went to the movies last night and for a single taste of ice cream, followed by a piece of cake and a cup with two scoops in it (I love dating a fat kid), we were given two forks and three spoons. I was puzzling what to do with the spoons that I didn’t even use and Colby said to just throw them out, “or put them back in the bin, but that’s icky. Don’t do that.” Since when does touching the handle of a spoon spoil it for the next person? For that matter, what’s the problem with going to the pizza place, overestimating necessary napkins, and then putting back the pristine and unused ones? I do this all the time, and my friends give me looks. Why shouldn’t I?
meranie said,
June 15, 2006 at 8:55 pm
Oh Japan, the land of excessive packaging. One of my most-used phrases is “fukuro ga irimasen”— I don’t need a bag. I say this about a million times every day.
The bags that I do get I use over and over, as garbage bags in their final use. Do you have an alternative solution? My kids laugh at me because I have to have a garbage bag every day and I use the bags bread comes in (because my husband eats a lot of bread). The thing is, I’d love to use the same bag but I get kids with nosebleeds and, while stuffing their noses with tissues and urging the kids to put the used tissues into the bags, I am trying not to freak out. I’m ok with spiders, bugs, snakes, animals, heights, but blood is just… ::sighs::
I read somewhere that there are bags that are not harmful when they biodegrade, but here in Japan, we burn all our trash… so, I should seek out bags that don’t hurt the air as much when they burn and never use other bags? I’m willing to do that. I’m currently working on knitting a shopping bag (i’ve been obsessed for the past few days…)
Welcome home!
The Worsted Witch » Fast Food Planet said,
August 22, 2006 at 12:07 pm
[...] For something truly frightening, check out the places I can get a frappuccino at, just by work. I’d much rather support an independently owned establishment (extra points for fair trade, organic options), of course, which you can “delocate” by zip code. Remember to bring your own commuter mug for a waste-free caffeine fix. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Framed! said,
October 19, 2006 at 4:37 pm
[...] Most picture frames you find at the store are mass-produced from unsustainably harvested virgin lumber. Deforestation bad. We don’t like deforestation. Next time you need to preserve a memory for display, consider picking up a second-hand frame at a thrift store or flea market, or give some preused (or “preloved” as the kids today are calling it) materials a second lease on life. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Mail Call: Eco Scrapbooking said,
November 8, 2006 at 3:12 pm
[...] A way to nudge the market in a greener direction is to write to your favorite scrapbook companies and politely (but firmly) ask that they provide more recycled and sustainable alternatives. You’ve already mentioned digital scrapbooking as a forest- and resource-friendly alternative, but if you prefer a more tactile experience, you can also download a line “scrapbooking kits” called E-cuts and then print your tags and embellishments at home using recycled cover stock, such as from Living Tree Paper, Treecycle, Neenah Paper, or New Leaf. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Money Quote said,
December 7, 2006 at 10:52 am
[...] Related articles: 1. Mail Call: Eco Scrapbooking 2. It’s Getting Hot in Here: Act Now 3. Simply Green Giving 4. Bring Your Ever-Lovin’ Own 5. Bonfire of the Vanity Fair Green Issue (Chekhov’s Eco Tip) 5. Junk the Junk Mail [...]
The Worsted Witch » Dauphine Press said,
April 21, 2007 at 10:13 am
[...] Graphic designer Trish Kinsella, who founded the Petaluma-Calif. based company in 1999, wrote to let me know that Dauphine primarily uses Crane & Co.’s 100-percent cotton papers, which are made from the reclaimed cotton by-products of the garment industry. (No new cotton is grown for manufacturing any of the papers.) Also preferred over virgin-tree options: Neenah Paper’s Classic Crest 100-percent post-consumer recycled papers. “Their mills are even wind-powered, which is an added bonus,” Kinsella says. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Neither Paper Nor Plastic: An Ecological Intervention said,
May 2, 2007 at 7:41 pm
[...] I think it would have even more rad if Jaster had used surplus, vintage or preloved fabric for his totes, but considering that our love affair with disposables has bred a swirling vortex of plastic trash the size of Texas in the North Pacific Ocean (view an animated map here), among other evils, I’d just be splitting hairs. [...]
The Worsted Witch » Airline Industry Makes Global Warming Priority said,
June 7, 2007 at 6:19 am
[...] You can also tote along your own SIGG or other reusable bottle to fill up with water on the plane (so you don’t have to rely on those little plastic cups to stay hydrated), as well as bring your own commuter mug for hot beverages such as tea and coffee. They’re small details, but you’ll cut down a whole lot of waste simply by continuing some of your BYO habits in the air. [...]