Seattle Weekly writer finds which coffee giant is green

Seattle Weekly Writer, Aimee Curl, dug below the coffee grounds and into the dirt. Turns out that Tully’s is out-greening the coffee giant, Starbucks. They are using “eco-tainers” and really managing their waste flow. The smaller Seattle coffee chain report 78% recycling rate for all the waste their business creates. Read more….

Little coffee companies are leading the way.

The Point – tipping the balance for reusable cups.

A new website, The Point, allows anyone to start a boycott or similar campaign against a company or organization. One of the more popular one’s is against Starbuck’s use of unsustainable disposable to-go cups. P. Zelchenko, who started this action, is hoping it “will embarrass Starbucks into truly embracing the environmental ideals that it claims to espouse.”

The idea starts with 102,950 people joining this campaign after which time they will begin writing their names on each paper cup they are served for “in store” use. If Starbucks does not comply they will “insist that they remain on a shelf, to be reused the next time we return to the store.”

Another campaign of interest involves Pepsi’s use of unsustainable plastic in bottling their Aquafina Brand water. “When we reach our goal of recruiting 50,000 Aquafina drinkers, we will stop drinking Aquafina water, causing PepsiCo an abrupt drop in profits, amounting to approximately $20 million annually in gross profit.” They demand they find a bio-plastic alternative to existing bottles or suffer the consequences of a sizable boycott and likely a lot of bad press. Cheers to the campaign organizers and everyone at The Point for an interesting approach to social change.

Cornstarch Coffee Travel Mug

We all know that using any sort of cup that is washable is far superior to disposable versions. It’s better for the planet, uses less land fill space, no trees get cut down, and more…

GreenHome.com offers suggestions for eco-friendly alternatives to popular earth-nasty products. Included in their offerings is a travel mug made from corn-starch. This sustainable and renewable organic compound looks and feels like plastic but under years of hot and moist conditions, will biodegrade . I don’t think you can put it in the dishwasher, buy hey, your christmas shopping just got a whole lot easier!

You can choose from 3 different designs printed with vegetable derived inks.

Coffee trays not made from paper!

According to Wikipedia, Bagasse is the left-over bio mass when you’ve squeezed all of the juice out of sugarcane. In addition to being explored as feed for live stock and raw material for creating bio fuels, bagasse can also replace paper in many disposable products including cups, trays, plates and bowls. After an exhaustive search I found TreeCycle, purveyors of fine recycled paper products. They sell those little coffee convenience trays that keep you from spilling milk all over your car when you are kind enough to pick up some caffeine for your coworkers. Better yet the trays are made from this material of the gods, bagasse, which happens to be sustainable and biodegradable. Hurray for responsible coffee drinking!

That NY coffee cup feeling

If you have ever ordered coffee from a street vendor in NYC you will find this product particularly comforting. We Are Happy To Serve You makes a ceramic coffee mugs that look identical to their earth-thrashing paper counterparts. This is a much cooler alternative to a made-in-China plastic Empire State Building statue that just sits there doing nothing.

Eco-Friendly Cups Use No Plastic

Paper cup manufacturer, International Paper, has created a cup that is defininitely a step in the right direction. Their Ecotainer hot beverage cup is lined with corn protein instead of plastic. According to their press release this small move to replacing the petro-chemical ingredients could save enough energy to heat over 8,300 American homes a year. They mention on the site that they also use renewable energy to produce the cup but strangely there is no mention of the cups’ virgin paper content. While perhaps a bit of green-washing from a company whose core business still relies on trees for it’s profit, they offer a slightly less evil disposable cup that is ready for use in your local Starbucks today.

How can I recycle this styrofoam cup?

I’ve been wandering how to recycle a few items lately. Styrofoam is one of those items that I’m never sure what to do with.

Black plastic food containers are another one. If you live in Los Angeles, the Dept. of Public Works can supply tips on what you can recycle and also how to give a new life to things un-wanted.

My green friend Courtney and I discovered a recent LA Public works ad campaign that suggests that it’s now ok to put Styrofoam in your recycling bin. You can even dial “311″ from any phone to get the details. If you forgot your own cup and looking for a way to keep caffeine withdrawal to a minimum, the word on the street is to use paper over foam any chance you get, though. (Jump cut to images of cooler pieces and flip flops washing up on pristine white sand beaches in Thailand).

HowCanIRecycleThis.com opens up the discussion to it’s viewers. Tapping in to crowd-sourcing for finding recycling solutions seems like an amazingly elegant answer. This UK site does a great job of helping visitors think of ways to re-purpose certain items. Still don’t know what to do with pesky Styrofoam…

Then I found American Chemistry. While this site green washes certain ugly chemical products, it does offer valuable local resources for responsibly handling those plastics I’ve been wandering about.

Tree Hugger does it again in this article about dealing with foam recycling. Grinning Planet also offers foam cup facts. Cooking in foam can be toxic. Who knew?

Reusable vs. Disposable Cups

Not all cups are created equal. According the Institute of Lifecycle Environmental Assessment
a reusable cup must be used a certain number of times to make up for the energy used to create it.

The chart shows how you must use a ceramic mug 39 times to make it more efficient than a paper disposable cup. Read a full article about this at Make Magazine online.

This chart though doesn’t address things like these vessel’s impact on the planet once they break or are thrown away. The disposable cups take up more space in landfills and cannot be recycled like the reusable cups. I find myself using my steel and plastic reusable mugs at more than coffee shops. I get some strange looks at restaurants where they automatically just give you a disposable cup. I use it as an opportunity to say, “No thanks I don’t want a disposable cup because they come from trees/oil.”

Goodbye plastic bottles!

Looks like the biodegradable plastic bottle is finally here. All those disposable water bottles we just throw in the trash all come from refined crude oil, likely shipped from the Middle East. Innocent is a company with a healthy organic juice product that implements bottles made from modified corn starch. Save them up and put them in your garden instead of ‘recycling’ them like regular plastic bottles.