January 10, 2008
Dear Workplace Wastemongers
Hello co-workers. Do you see us burning a hole through your backs, staring at you viciously out of the corners of our eyes as we watch you come into the shared kitchen, grab an essentially non-recyclable pseudo-styrofoam cup from the stack next to the water cooler and somehow manage to avoid the sign that my friend put up next to the cooler indicating what wasteful, ignorant fools you are for not being able to bring your own goddamned coffee cup or water glass to re-use at work? Yes, you. We see you. You suck.
Photo by Troy McClure SF
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Foam cups aren't that bad... it takes as much energy to wash your mug as it does to create a new foam cup. Take into account the monumental energy cost of making a mug and it's pretty wasteful to use a mug.
Maybe ask one of your coworkers why they use the foam cups rather than just being passive agressive on your blog?
Here's an analysis that doesn't include the engery needed to wash the mug... you'll see it takes 1000 uses to break even drinking from a nonwashed mug.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/04/reusable_vs_disposable_cu.html
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Ah jld, I knew someone would bring this one up. That Make post discusses the energy to *create* the ceramic vs. polystyrene cups. But you see, I use my mug that I brought from home (which I'd already had anyhow, you see) over and over again. In fact, to quote that Make post more precisely than you did: "a ceramic cup takes 1,000 uses to break even with foam cups. so, about 3 years if you use a cup every day - that's not so bad."
Yep, that's not so bad. What is bad? I've watched someone come into the kitchen, pull out a foam cup, fill it, drink the water, and throw it into the "recycling" bin. Few people actually reuse those polystyrene cups (a tactic my friend's flyer also endorsed), so you have to factor in the throw-away factor (especially because I don't have to wash the glass/cup I use for water out every day-I rinse it and only occasionally give a quick wash in the sink). And here's the kicker on that front: in Washington, "recycled" polystyrene is burned in a Waste-to-Energy plant in Spokane, which converts only 12% of the produced heat into energy.
So let's revisit: bring a cup that you already have at home anyhow (so the "cost of creating it" argument is already moot) and reuse it for years to come, or continue to use and throw away polystyrene cups over and over.
And, I did ask someone once, and they just shrugged as if to say "Eh, never thought about it." And then they filled up their foam cup and walked off.
Lastly, that was passive aggression literally oozing with sarcasm, thank you very much.
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OOZING!!
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Why would you wash a cup after using it for water?
Maybe your company should buy everyone glasses and not allow the styrofoam. And if you lose your glass? Tough. You drink out of the palms of your hands.
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or you ask your company to buy recycled paper cups instead of styrofoam. you could do SOMETHING other than bitch about it on a blog that your co-workers probably don't even know exists.
but what fun would it be actually fixing the problem? it's easier to just complain to the ether.
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Paper cups would be no better. I'm with Troy. Take 'em all out, and make the poor saps who don't bring their own cups drink out of their hands.
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Wow. Everyone get's on you about bitching. It's not like you can't bitch AND do something.
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Yeah, that'll be an interesting day when everyone with a blog thinks to themselves before posting: "Or would it be better to fix this problem personally!"
I suspect guilty consciences.