Cafe's and Their Impact on the Landfill and Your Health

The Shocking Yet Real Environmental Affects

Let's start talking about garbage. Starbucks, uses 8,000 paper cups every minute which amounts to approximately 4 billion paper cups thrown away every year! 4 Billion. This doesn't even include the plastic cups that are they used. But, what's wrong with paper cups? It's biodegradable, you say. Yes however, their cups are lined with plastic (so the hot drink won't dissolve the paper) therefore making these cups non-recyclable in America aside for the four cities who are able to recycle these cups. Therefore, 4 billion Starbucks paper cups are tossed into the landfill every year. Years ago, Starbucks pledged to make their cups fully recyclable by the year 2015. Surprise, no plan has even come to fruition and today, less than 2% of their drink sales are consumed in reusable mugs. Why is that? That's the easiest question ever: because consumers don't care. Several years ago, there was a stink about plastic straws and Starbucks jumped on the bandwagon and decided to eliminate plastic straws by 2020 which they claimed they did. I don't know...I still get a plastic straw with my unsweetened green tea I get once a year in desperation for something cool to drink on the road so I'm not so sure about their "success." Besides, they care about straws but not about the cups?! Why? Oh yeah, because consumers suddenly made a stink about plastic straws.

So, if Starbucks uses up to 4 Billion paper cups annually, how many of those plastic cups do they use? It's estimated that those plastic cups they give out for those sugary, toxic drinks are thrown away at a rate of 3 billion annually. Still worried about those straws? Recently, they announced that their cups now have 20% less plastic than the original design but....it's still 3 billion cups into the landfill and oceans every year.

This is just Starbucks. Think of ALL the US coffee places who use plastic and plastic-lined paper cups for their drinks. This number of throw-away cups is well over 7 Billion cups in the landfill every year. Think bigger: Starbucks is in every developed nation around the world. Not to mention other coffee places. The amount of trash just from your daily coffee fix is staggering. Billions of people every year having just one drink adds to an enormous amount of trash-just from coffee!

But, paper is still better than plastic even if it's lined with plastic, right? Sure....except that it takes about 2 million trees to produce these cups. Trees that help cool the planet which we all know is getting warmer and warmer. I'm no tree hugger myself but I do adore and appreciate what trees give us: peace, oxygen, shade, forests, animal habitats, and so on. Maybe you can actually save a tree by not having a daily visit to a coffee shop!

This may not be an issue for you, it's easy to turn a blind eye and get your coffee drink on steroids. Let's try another angle: your health. Yeah, you know all that sugar is bad but it's so good that it doesn't really matter every once in a while, right?

SUGAR SUGAR SUGAR

Starbucks is known for their fancy, sugary flavored drinks and while drinking a dessert can be so satisfying, what is it really doing to your body? Yes, you are drinking a dessert every time you order a sugary drink in a plastic cup. (I mean, how many people really just order a black coffee?) Some of these drinks have upwards of 70 grams of sugar in them which is double the amount of daily sugar the FDA recommends. It's no wonder people have become so strung out--we're all on a sugar high from drinking the 3 o'clock dessert! Their syrup flavorings all contain highly suspicious and toxic ingredients. Not only are they excessively high in sugar, some of the sweeteners they use aren't really sugar at all! They contain sucralose (leads to gut inflammation) and high fructose corn syrup (a GMO corn sweetener that wrecks havoc all throughout your body),

What are these ingredients?

They can also contain hydrogenated oils (terrible not only for your heart but for your entire system), mono and diglycerides which have been heavily linked to cancer, canola oil (GMO seed oil and all seed oils are quite bad for your overall health), palm oil (another seed oil but bad for the palm forests that are being decimated by food production), xanthium gum, glycerol monostearate, and carrageenan (emulsifiers that are terrible for gut health and are now being removed from many foods), and the list continues (you can find ingredients lists online)

So what now?

I'm not advocating for anyone to end their coffee run habit. Sometimes, we all need to pop in and grab something to drink or to even treat ourselves to something cold on a hot day. But, I would highly recommend visiting these places no more than once a week. Make your coffee at home. If you have a coffee pod system at home, buy higher quality flavored pods, it'll save you a lot of money in the long run and you can control the sugar content of your drink. Let's be clear though, I do NOT recommend coffee pods: they create excess trash and you are brewing hot liquid in a plastic cup which is highly likely that the plastic is breaking down into your coffee and you are consuming these plastic particles. It has also been discovered that it is near impossible to deep clean these coffee makers therefore allowing mold to set into the system...but I digress.

If you are old school and have a drip coffee maker with a timer, you can set it up the evening before to save time and voila! In the morning, the drip coffee has been brewed and all you need to do is pour it into your metal insulated cup, add you milk and sugar if you want and off you go! It costs scents versus several dollars at coffee places. Even saves you time: no long drive-thru lines, just a quick 1-2 minute prep time in your own kitchen.

Sometimes, in different cities I visit, I'll visit a Starbucks because I need their hot or iced green tea (unsweetened). I try to visit local baristas but Starbucks is familiar and sometimes familiarity in a foreign place is comforting. But, this is maybe 5 times a year, at most. I was in Belgium recently and it was raining and a nice hot cup of green tea was a necessity! Do feel guilty if you spend more than $50 a month getting your daily coffee fix. That's about 10 visits a month. Do feel a tad hesitant if you spend more than $30 a month at these coffee chains. Be okay if you need to pop in every once in a while to quench your thirst, or celebrate a promotion, or "just because". End your habit and reduce your support for these big corporations who really don't care about the environment or your health. If you are anti-Monsanto/Bayer like myself, know that every time you visit these places, you are putting money into their pockets, too.

There are many copycat recipes online that you can try! Some are quite easy to make, others are more involved but are probably the ones that taste closer to the real drink. I will say to make an easy iced mocha: take your leftover brewed coffee from the morning of, pour it over ice, add some chocolate and a bit of sugar to taste and voila! (Even adding a splash of liqueur like Baileys or Kahlua for an evening kick can work, too!) Pour it into a glass, sit on your porch and sip away.