Daily Detox: Get Caffeinated

Caffeine junkies, I’m talking to you, one coffee-cup-holding environmentalist to another. Wherever your favorite morning brew may come from and wherever it may go, sip it from a reusable cup to reduce land fill waste and energy use.

Now all coffee cups require energy to make whether they are reused, recycled or tossed. The Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) can make for an interesting debate. Pablo at Triple Pundit has a nice breakdown between the energy costs for manufacturing between steel mugs, ceramic mugs and Styrofoam (polystyrene) Ask Pablo: The Coffee Mug Debacle. And TreeHugger’s EcoTip: Coffee Spilling the Beans has some more numbers to jostle the brain. Both assessments point to ceramic as the eco-friendliest coffee mug material.

But more than energy use, coffee cups made of Styrofoam (like those omnipresent Dunkin’ Donuts cups) are space hogs and contribute to landfill waste. They could be recycled but unfortunately don’t always make it in the right bin, actually seldom. The other downside to Styrofoam is that the material can leach chemicals (endocrine disruptors) into your drink. That’s a bad thing.

Hard plastic mugs can also leach chemicals, specifically Bisphenol A (BPA), so they’re not the healthiest choice - although they do reduce landfill waste if used for a considerable time. Stainless steel mugs are hard to break so they have a long life making up for some of the embodied energy from manufacturing. The healthiest, eco-friendliest choice is a ceramic mug. These are widely available with fitted lids for travel and it’s likely you could find an original piece from a local artist.

All this talk about the morning sidekick has got me thinking - what are you drinking from? It seems so personal but I want to know. Are you addicted to Styrofoam? Got an old favorite mug with a story? Let’s see how readers are taking their coffee, leave a comment below…