BYOB

By mudlark • November 26th, 2007

Bring Your Own Bottle. Or, more precisely, mug. When you’ll be stopping off at Starbucks or whatever your favorite coffee shop is, have your own to-go travel mug handy. Think about the waste we’d save if stopped using disposable coffee cups and water bottles. The way our population drinks bottled water and lattes in to-go cardboard cups, the numbers are staggering.

If readers of a single magazine (Organic Style did the study) brought their own cups for one week, enough trees would be saved to fill 2 football fields. If they switched for only a day, they’d save enough energy as 1,000 gallons of gasoline. There’s a website that estimates how much waste we generate with our disposable coffee cups. You’d be surprised. Right now, it’s at approximately 2,684 pounds per hour – including only the people who have registered their coffee cup on the website.

The moral of the story? Bringing your own mug gives you a cuter, more ergonomic, highly personalized container. It turns your coffee into a wardrobe accessory! (Well, maybe that’s pushing it a bit.) And it’s good for the environment. What’s to lose?

Comments(3) Being Green, Lifestyle, Water

Comments

By liz @ monkeykisses on November 27th, 2007 at 10:31 am

Wow.. That is amazing isnt it… I choose to use huge 32 oz bottles for my water that i have been using the same 3 bottles for since i got pregnant in 2005. They are great and I cant stress it enough that my recycle bin is never as full as the rest of the neighborhood. Now on to the coffee mugs… Need to find some cute ones.

By Kristi on November 27th, 2007 at 10:36 am

Any tips on where to find stainless-steel coffee mugs? Every time I want to buy one it’s plastic or plastic-lined. Stainless steel seems so much cleaner and safer, but they’re really hard to find!

By mudlark on November 27th, 2007 at 1:11 pm

http://www.reusablebags.com has a decent selection. The mug pictured above is a SIGG which can also be purchased at http://www.mysigg.com (in the thermo bottle section).