One great thing to collect is disposable paper coffee cups! Sarcastically fun fact: if each member of Congress collected an equal share of cups to represent just one year's worth of the world's total consumption, they'd each have 108,000,000! And check out this depressing coincidence - they all happen to store their prized collections in various city dumps spread throughout the planet!
Actually when it's put that way it doesn't sound too bad. Kinda sounds like the cups are neatly arranged on shelves waiting to be sold on eBay. They're not.
Look, there's no solution to the mind-bogglingly wasteful practice of coffee cup manufacturing, thirty minutes of using, and throwing away. They're not recyclable. They're not structured soundly for reuse. You can only turn so many into kitschy iPod speakers.
No solution. No. Don't even say it.
Check out the folks at betacup. They're putting the hivemind on this little problem and have $20,000 of prize money behind it. Interesting ideas include a collapsible travel cup that fits in your pocket, and an innovative shared ownership model - bring your filthy mug back, exchange it for a ready-to-go clean one and let the establishment do the cleaning.
credit: john karpinsky on flickr
This kid's got the idea.
[Wait, why was Congress collecting coffee cups again? I guess contact your rep and talk to them about climate change? That sounds right.]
No comments:
Post a Comment