YES for Reusable Coffee Cups

   Paper cups are designed for a single use and then thrown away or recycled. It is known that plastic cups are more harmful to the environment, but contrary to our conventional thoughts, paper cups can also have malign impact on the environment. Over 6.5 million trees were cut down to make 16 billion paper cups used by the U.S. consumers in 2006, using 4 billion gallons of water and resulting in 253 million pounds of waste. Paper cups are rarely recycled because of the concern of contamination. In addition, it is technically hard to recycle because of the plastic that covers the inside part of paper cup. It is the plastic film used to coat the paper cup prevent them from decomposing, although the paper cups are made from renewable resources. There are two kinds of paper cups; PE and PLA. PE is a petroleum based film coated on paper cups which can slow down the process of biodegrading whereas PLA is 100 percent biodegradable and its resources are generated from renewable resources, feld corn.

  

   PLA coated paper cups can be an alternative to the existing PE coated paper cups. However, unfortunately, coffee shops are unlikely to use the 100 percent biodegradable paper cups because PLA's production cost is more higher than that of PE. Then what could be the solution? Now that people are more aware of the seriousness of climate change and have more interest in eco-friendly life-style, they are calling on coffee shops to deal with those unenvironmental paper cups. Starbucks company set up a goal of serving 100 percent of its beverages in reusable or recyclable cups by 2015. In order to achieve this goal the company might suffer losses, but considering that current preference of the consumers, which demands for businesses to come up with more complex than "cheaper and better", the benefit will exeeds its losses. Peace Coffee, a Minnesota based coffee company, is an good example. In 2008 and 2009, the company was growing at an annual rate of 20 percent, which is a miracle, given that every businesses were struggling at that time. What is it that consumers have chosen this company's coffee? It is the business philosophy that considers a tripple bottom line.

   Even though companies are responsible for what they sell, people should not blame coffee shops for using paper cups. It were ourselves who made companies only focus on lowering the production cost regardless of its harmful effect on our environment. Therefore, we should admit that the problem can be solved only when the company and the consumers cooperate. Coffee companies should put effort into developing technology that can produce biodegradable paper cups in a lower price and come up with programs that encourage people to use reusable cups. For their part, consumers should have more interest in campaigns which companies provide and  actively participate by giving ideas what they could do. Following can be a solution.

• Give a free cup of coffee to the customers who used reusable cups for 15 times.
• Give a 10-percent discount off the coffee price to the customers who bring reusable cup.
• Encourage customers to use reusable cups by running a campaign that informs customers about the negative impact of paper cups once a week. 
• Governments should give incentives such as tax cuts or subsidies to those companies who give discount to their customers who bring a reusable cup. 
• As a long-term solution teachers should give a reward to children who bring their own bottles at the school. This can make children adjust to bringing their reusable cups.