But the thing is even changing one of your habits can have a hugely positive effect on our wee planet. Take coffee cups for example. In the US alone, 23 billion disposable coffee cups were used in 2010. That's the equivalent of 8.5 thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of waste. So by switching to reusable cups, like the Hookturn Re-usable Coffee Cup, you'd be giving our trees a much needed break.
But what is actually so harmful about disposable coffee cups? Why is it that every Eco Store seems to be spruiking them so hard?
It comes down to a few major factors:
* They're made of bleached paper. Recycled paper is too leaky and flimsy to hold liquid. So that means a lot of trees are needed to meet the demand. In the US in 2010, 9.4 million trees were cut down to make cups.
* You can't recycle them. In order to stop the paper cups from leaking and to help them retain heat, the cups are coated with a plastic resin called polyethylene. Once it ends up in landfill, it decomposes and releases the greenhouse gas, methane, into the atmosphere.
* Resource intensive manufacturing. To manufacture paper- trees need to be cut down, wood turned into chips then the chips need to be washed and processed. All up it requires a lot of energy, water and trees i.e. not so good for the planet.
For more coffee cup facts, check out:
Wishing you a guilt-free caffeine kick,
Grace
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