Mini Blog #37 - Corn Cup
I was driving home the other day from Cedar Falls, IA when I stopped at a little gas station off the I-80 to grab a cup of coffee. I was absolutely ecstatic at what I came across! No, not the coffee…it was your typical watered down gas station coffee. However, as my fingertips touched the coffee cup, I felt a sensation like no other before. This was no ordinary cup. I rushed to the counter in excitement and pleaded for the cigarette smoking attendant to tell me what in the world this cup is made out of! She shrugged her shoulders and mumbled something about corn.
You see, this cup felt strange. It didn’t feel like paper. It didn’t feel like styrofoam. There was something absolutely extraordinary about this 24-oz-liquid-holding-magnificent-piece-of-engineering. Its texture felt bubbly and furry to the touch.
The second I got home I began my research. What I found was an absolute delight for someone as worried about the environment and the landfill crisis as myself. The cup that I had stumbled across is an “EcoCup.” This cup is developed from corn byproducts such as cobs and stalks and is completely biodegradable. Why is this such a delight for hippies like me?
You see…
Here is the scary part…
Of the 100 billion cups of coffee that America drinks every year, approximately 14 billion of those cups are served in good ol’ disposable cups. That is enough cups to wrap around the planet 55 times. Big deal though, right? I mean, at least the paper cups that are used are biodegradable, right? Everybody knows paper is biodegradable. It comes from trees. Duh!!
Wrong! Every paper coffee cup or any other paper cup designed to hold a hot beverage has a plastic lining made from a petrochemical. This lining takes thousands and thousands and thousands of years to break down in a landfill.
Notice I did not say biodegrade. When something biodegrades, the microbes in the soil eat it and digest it and it basically becomes dirt and organic matter. These plastic liners, along with things like plastic bags and bottles do not biodegrade; they simply break down meaning they just keep breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces until they are pretty much microscopic and end up back in our ground water and drinking water as flavor enhancers. On top of that, if we saved the petro chemicals used in the lining of coffee cups and used them instead as an energy source, we could heat the entire city of Newtown, Connecticut (8,300 residents) for an entire year. If we stopped using plastic shopping bags we could probably heat the entire state if not the entire Northeast part of the country. But instead, they end up blowing around landfill sites and choking kittens and puppies and the occasional bird or two.
The cool thing about this EcoCup that I found out is that the plastic in its lining is made of CORN! This makes it completely and 100 percent BIODEGRADEBALE. Well, I shouldn’t say 100 percent…there is that dang plastic lid. But anyway, I just think it is wonderful that we are developing more and more eco-friendly products like this.
That’s all I really had to say. I am gong to go watch SportsCenter now and after that, me and my new EcoCup are going to go for a walk and we might even go shopping at Gordman’s or Home Depot together if time permits.
At least we’re drinking from cups made from corn instead of burning it as fuel when we have huge reserves of oil fields here at home, completely untapped.
Sort of reminds me of the grocery store bag madness when I was a kid. I can remember paper bags being replaced by the plastic ones we all know today. Yes, plastic saved trees, and that’s good!
Now, of course, we are going back to paper because the plastic bags don’t break down fast enough in landfills, etc.
Absolutely senseless. I think I’ll ask for a plastic bag with a paper bag insert so I can have the best of both worlds. This way, I’m doing “my part” because the environmentalists sure can’t make up their mind. I’ll be saving trees, while saving the landfills at the same time, right?
When will this environmental madness end?
Comment by Braden — April 27, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
You could do the really big hippie thing like me and bring your own canvas bags to the grocery store. Or, you can get plastic bags and bring them back to the grocery stores where most stores these days have receptacles you can put them in and they are recycled. Or…now, I know this sounds crazy, Braden…YOU COULD PUT THE PAPER BAGS IN YOU RECYCLING BIN. But that would just be madness, as you say.
Comment by Andy — April 27, 2008 @ 3:34 pm
re: Paper vs. Plastic.
The answer is canvas. We’ve been using canvas for about 18 months now and it’s awesome. We bought eight regular bags and two of the insulated ones for frozen foods. They are so much stronger and can hold so much more per bag.
re: “Absolutely senseless.”
Braden, scientists use something called The Scientific Method to make decisions about how things happen and react. They teach this method in the 7th grade. So, with that in mind, if something was thought to be a good idea in the past, that doesn’t automatically invalidate new empirical information. Stop using data and dogmatic arguments that are irrelevant to the current state of scientific development.
Comment by AxsDeny — April 28, 2008 @ 6:50 am
“Braden, scientists use something called The Scientific Method to make decisions about how things happen and react. They teach this method in the 7th grade. So, with that in mind, if something was thought to be a good idea in the past, that doesn’t automatically invalidate new empirical information. Stop using data and dogmatic arguments that are irrelevant to the current state of scientific development.”
You mean they did this when they all decided that ethanol was the way to go? Nice scientific method(s) there, especially since there are food shortages now because of their “scientific method.”
Nice try, no cigar.
Comment by Braden — May 1, 2008 @ 6:02 am
Scientists don’t set energy policy, nor did they decide that ethanol was the way to go. Lawmakers do. I _wish_ that our lawmakers were scientists. Heck, I wish our lawmakers would _listen_ to scientists. Perhaps they would be more apt to make pragmatic decisions rather than knee-jerk reactions to what’s in the news this week.
The people that pushed for ethanol use were (mostly) senators from farm states. Scientists said it was possible, but not necessarily a good idea. We all know that pragmatism isn’t a skill that the government has managed to master. I know that I’ve thought it was a bad idea from the start. It would take hundreds of acres of corn to support even one American commuter.
Comment by AxsDeny — May 1, 2008 @ 2:18 pm