Fall – the season of cooler weather, cosy sweaters, scarves and all things pumpkin spice. There are endless, beautiful social media posts involving falling leaves, seasonal baking and the iconic white single-use coffee cups with the green logo – you know the ones? After all, what is fall without a warm drink in hand? The single-use coffee cup truly has become synonymous with the changing of the seasons and has become something of a fashion statement.
In this era of increasing awareness about consumption and our daily habits surrounding waste, the question begs to be asked: how have we let such a destructive item like a single-use coffee cup be placed on such a high pedestal? There is such satisfaction in the purchase, the first wonderful sip and the comforting feeling of the warm drink in hand. It is the 30 minutes later when the magic has worn away and it is just a piece of trash and we begin the search for the nearest garbage – for who wants to carry around an empty cup?
In this season of the Pumpkin Spice Latte, we need to stop the glorification of the single-use cup. It shouldn’t be a status symbol, or a sign of happiness, fulfillment or success. Ads on social media have taken to adding a disposable to-go cup in the hands of models to add to the “cosy” factor of the photographs. Elementary kids are being seen around our community and at school with disposable coffee cups in hand to match dad or mom’s grande double shot espresso with extra foam. As far as enlightening the next generation to the climate crisis we are facing, encouraging drinking from a to-go cup isn’t a great message to be sending to our kids.
As it stands, a single-use cup takes about 30 years to decompose in a landfill under the right conditions. Not to mention it takes two years just to start the decomposition process and will release greenhouse gases as it breaks down. As for the plastic lid, that is a much longer decomposition process with lasting effects as well. For the time you have used the cup itself, is it worth the time it will now sit taking up space in a landfill, polluting our environment?
As we begin to question our daily habits around consumption as a society, we desperately need to question what it is about a single-use to-go cup that sparks such delight. Is it the number of likes we will receive on our Instagram account once we post the perfect picture? Is it the “treat yourself” mentality that gives us a free pass to be so flippant in our consumption? Whatever the reason, it is time to change our thinking around the to-go cup (as well as all other single-use items we use daily) and move to more sustainable options. Let’s stop the glorification of the white and green disposable cup, and be inspired to be better stewards of our planet.
Joclyn Gosselin, St. Albert
