Need your caffeine fix on your way to work? Do you go through the drive through window to get your morning coffee? See if your local coffee shop will let you use your own traveling cup, many will. According to published studies Americans use more than 16 billion disposable coffee cups every year. Most cups only use a small percentage of recyclable material and are NOT recyclable themselves due to plastic content used to protect the cup from liquid leakage.
“In 2006, it was estimated that paper cups accounted for 252 million pounds of garbage resting in landfills and accounted for 4 billion gallons of water wasted, 6.5 million trees cut down, and almost 5,000 billion BTU’s of energy used.” Better than drive through – make your own coffee, and when you do use fair trade, sustainably grown organic beans, it’s healthier and costs a lot less.
