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The Betacup challenge: Eliminate paper cups
58 billion cups are landfilled each year and Betacup wants to stop it through good design.
Mon, May 03 2010 at 8:59 PM
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58 billion is a hard number to get your head around — the number of paper cups thrown away (not recycled) each year. Appropredia (an awesome wiki on sustainabilty data) estimates that you get about 2,500 cups out of each tree. Here are the dramatic impacts added up:
- 23 million trees felled
- 13 species extinct
- 7.2 million tons of CO2
- 14. 5 billion gallons of fresh water
- About 1 billion pounds of waste
... all so we can conveniently down our favorite hot beverages on the run. It's a massive problem, and to date no good solutions have been put forward. It's not really about changing consumers' recycling behavior because most paper cups are coated with wax and therefore not recyclable. And for some reason, the reusable thermos cups have never caught on. Too hard to clean? Bulky to carry around? Weird lids?
So a design challenge has been issued by Betacup, a project of core77, an amazing product design publication. One notable sponsor is Starbucks, a company that is responsible for a huge percentage of that cup waste and (from what I understand) is highly motivated to find a solution (though one wonders why 20 years worth of billion dollar profits wouldn't have to led to some R & D initiatives of their own). The prize winner will receive $10,000 and the potential of starting a revolution in the business of beverage containers. Submissions started last month and voting will go on through May. I'm not sure I agree that it will save the world, but if a good solution is found that rethinks the way we consume hot beverages, it would certainly be a step in the right direction!
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Paper wax is not recyclable?? How about using the R/D money to find ways to make wax recyclable?!
how about if you want coffee to go you need to bring your own cup, or at least offer more than a five cent discount. also if they are drinking in the cafe they need to actually serve customers in their mugs not in the paper cups - most folks don't even know that you can get your coffee there in a real mug because they don't even bother asking...
How about if we just learn to each person take responsibility and then pass it forward - show others how they can recycle, be responsible for their waste, and then the businesses you frequent - tell them they need to be more responsible and recyle, reuse, reduce or you will not shop there/buy their products.
et's not forget about paper napkins, plastic coffee lids, straws and plastic utensils. I personally think BYO should apply everywhere for all of that stuff. Don't have your own coffee cup? No coffee to go. Time to start marketing little nylon totes containing Bare Necessities "picnic" gear that we take with us. Restaurants might need to update facilities to have a spray/rinse area for customers when they are finished eating.