Happy Earth Day! What are some of your favorite ways to reduce, reuse and recycle?
Well, this question couldn’t have at better time for this mini rant…
One of my favourite enviro-friendly things I do (one of the ones I’m prouder of too) is my no-styro rule. I (in general practice*) refuse to use Styrofoam anything. Especially daily consumed “anythings”, like coffee cups, takeout containers, plates… either way, you get my point. At work, I even have a small Rubber Maid container for when I don’t bring my lunch and have to buy food from one of many local vendors… an trend that has caught on with others in my office. At one point, I think we had five of us toting around these reusable containers, often getting weird looks from the vendors until they got used to us. I also have a mug at my desk that I use when I go to get coffee.
My wife, ladyshark, and I tend to on the same page for a lot of the enviro issues, which is great. Infact, we both have these heavy duty Thermos travel mugs that we use when we allow ourselves to indulge in the increasingly frequent occasional latte. In addition, we usually tried to steer clear of establishments that use Styrofoam cups. However, yesterday we thought, “Well, we have our own cups… what’s the big deal?”
What’s the big deal, indeed…
Nothing really, unless (whilst your partner is concurrently returning shoes at a different store, you look away briefly to tend to your toddler who has managed to explode the bulk of a large muffin over his new sweater) the person making your latte uses two SEPARATE Styrofoam cups to measure out the soy “milk” for your drinks. I couldn’t believe it… but didn’t say anything because at that point, I knew those cups where destined for the garbage and, as a general rule, I’m not out to make enemies. Thus my silence. However, I briefly look back at Little “L” to again tend to the muffin shrapnel in his hair when once again, I look back to see her preparing our drinks in TWO OTHER Styrofoam cups… seriously, “WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY” (WTF) LADY!
Times like this I wish I were “slightly” more confrontational… I mean, COME ON! We brought our own bullletproof mugs that will last us forever so that we could avoid using disposable cups that would end up just sitting in the landfill forever.
“Oh, oops. I forgot [to think about what it is that I’m doing to the environment every time I throw one of these cups in the garbage]!”
Shut up. Please.
****SELF-RIGHTEUOS-RANT WARNING****
People please, if you are going to go out and buy coffee/tea everyday, purchase yourselves a nice mug that will last you a while. Most places (in Canada anyway) will even give you a 10-15 cent discount on your beverage. So this way, instead of throwing out over 240 disposable cups a year (multiply that by the number of hot beverages you consume each day at work) you could be saving almost $40 a year (now multiply that by the number of hot beverages you consume each day at work).
At least Oprah has hopped on the bio-deisel-bandwagon with her show last week about all the little things we can do to be a bit more environmentally friendly everyday… Now, an entire flock of people will ONLY NOW start thinking about these issues thanks to Oprah. Holy “Friday” that woman has a lot of influence… Of course now, she’ll probably get sued by slew of companies that produce disposable products. Sorry “Swifter”, Oprah just knocked your stock down a few pegs… Time to sue. Make some of that money back.
Okay, okay. That was a serious digression.
Long story short… buy a nice mug. If you and nine other people in your office decided to make this change, you would collectively be contibuting 2400 fewer disposable cups to the landfill every year. If ten people at ten different companies did the same, there would 24,000 fewer… and in ten different cities, 240,000 fewer… 10 provinces/states, 2,400,000 fewer… and then if all of this were carried out across a mere 10 countries on this planet, 24,000,000 fewer disposable cups would be added to the landfill every year… Multiply that by the number of hot beverages you consume each day at work.
Now go hug a tree… they’re a big reason you breathe.
—
steelie
I wonder what that would be like, doing that here in Germany. German's pretty environmental-concious, so they don't use styrofoam cups, but instead recyclable cardboard cups. 😉 But I had been wanting to get one of those extra-large Starbucks thermo mugs for a while now….and then again, I'm broke right now because of my yarn-binge from the past two days (will blog about that later :-p )
Yet another reason you guys are our friends!! You think of things I've never given a thought to… such as I've never thought of my morning coffee. Although, I use a mug when I'm at work, god knows how many timmies we've drank over the years. Can you use reusuable mugs at a drive-through? I know drive-throughs are sort of an anti-enviromentalism thing but I couldn't convince you-know-who to use a mug at Tim's if he had to go in to order. And he's my timmies hook-up!
BTW, the pc shopping bags are awsome! We picked up two the other day and you-know-who is loving them enough to grab two more on the way back from the gym. One more small step towards living a bit more of a greener life!! 🙂
YOU GO, STEELIE!! I'm soooooooooo with you on this one! Just a few weeks ago I heard that one of the joe's running for election at my university was fighting to make the school a styro-free zone. I don't know what happened with that (couldn't vote, he was part of the undergrad troop) but I sure hope that goes through! What a great idea — make all shops around the school that rely almost exclusively on the student body for their business go green. They could do nothing but comply or they'd be dead in the water. It certainly got me to thinking that if students across the country united and strong-armed local business to do the same, we'd have a huge impact. Hmmm…I have near to 10 different travel mugs and thermoses in my house. I seem to need one of every shape and size… (and right now I have my eye on this one! so perfectly shay…)Good to see you back 'round these parts (not that I'm setting any example)!
I agree with you about Oprah having a good impact on environmental issues by increasing awareness, but that woman needs to take her own advice. The day after that 'green' episode originally aired, she had forty or fifty guests arrive at her studio, each in their own stretch hummer. My roommate wrote a letter of complaint to Harpo studios.
Too true! I think I would've said something to the styrofoam lady!