Consider a Reusable Mug

This is a project from the Advanced Typography IV course at the Carnegie Mellon School of Design.

http://www.mollynix.com

February 2010

Consider the small coffee you order half way through your morning commute. Coffee in a paper cup with a sleeve and a lid.

Now consider the long line you wait in to get that coffee. And how many people get the exact same thing you did. Now spread that out all morning, between classes, mid-afternoon perk-ups, and those get-me-through-the-night coffee breaks. Now consider that at University of Washington, a university with forty-two thousand students, they go through about five thousand cups per day. Carnegie Mellon is smaller, but if they drink coffee with the same fervor as University of Washington Students, we go through about one thousand, two hundred and fifty cups per day.

These cups have a plastic lining that prevents them from being able to be recycled. Thus, every paper cup that is manufactured and coated with plastic resin ends up in a landfill. In 2006, it is estimated that paper cups accounted for 252 million pounds of garbage.

The plastic lid is made of petroleum products, the sleeve is manufactured with 60 percent post-consumer fiber. After all this, a cup of coffee is something the typical person consumes then throws away in 10 minutes, which goes to a landfill. Considering the immense amount of coffee that even just Americans drink (estimated at 23 billion in a year!), this makes a huge impact on the earth.

Now is that cup of coffee really so harmless?

Consider a reusable mug.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Reusable
• Coffee
• Coffee Cups
• Sustainability
• Carnegie Mellon
• Environmental
• Typography