topaz | who killed the electric coffeepot?

Current mood: forlornly mugless

Saddest mood ever. SAAAAAD.

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My mug has no more smug.

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mizarchivist

Poor mugless man. I still say the risk of breakage is worth not using paper cups. Mayhap find a good steel travel mug for the next round?

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docorion.livejournal.com

What

mizarchivist said. I also used to bring in my own coffee, in a steel thermos (it was the only way to ration my coffee-it was a one quart thermos, and held a 12 cup potful of coffee less the amount which went into a (big) steel travel mug). Plus I drank much better coffee than the carbon remover available at most hospitals.

Edited Date: 2009-06-18 03:29 pm (UTC)

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khedron.livejournal.com

I've also done the "bring my own coffee to ration, and have better coffee while I'm at it" thing. Really, worked very well -- especially considering the company policy was to make intentionally-weak Folgers except on Monday mornings, where it could be a bit stronger.

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A steel mug is a very good notion. I am also now thinking that the molded plastic mug my employer presented us with on Earth Day a couple of years ago is maybe less giggle-worthy than it seemed at the time ("for me? a non-recyclable plastic mug? aww, you shouldn't have!").

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Hah.

For what it's worth, I use this mug (http://www.gocontigo.com/catalog-product-detail;catalogproducts,cdf58f9d3e66b170ae56fcdafcb9b2f1.html) and I love it so much I bought a second one. It's available at Target. Stainless steel inside, easy to open and close with one hand, seals marvelously, easy to use carabiner handle that clips onto everything in the world. Perfect. Also, I haven't broken it! Them!

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!!?! CARABINER HANDLE !??!?!

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Yes. And it's well-designed. I poke the handle at something and suddenly the mug is hanging off of it.

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Are you anti-pink? I may just have a spare...

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Pink is a lovely color. Ellen will complain that it doesn't go with my eyes, but on the other hand people can hardly claim that they didn't see me in the road.

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Yes. (http://www.treehugger.com/files/2004/11/ecotip_coffee_c.php)

The thing these analyses (of which you can read several with varying conclusions by googling "life cycle analysis, coffee cups") seem to omit is the inherent bad nature of trash. Polystyrene makes by far the cheapest-per-use cup -- some analyses say you'd need to use ceramic 1000 times to make the carbon cost balance -- but also some pretty nasty trash that sticks around for the rest of time. But all of that argues in favor of even breakable mugs! Some of the analyses I've read suggest glass mugs to be better than ceramic ones because of lower manufacturing cost, though, if you're going to drop it anyway :)

Edited Date: 2009-06-18 03:38 pm (UTC)

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Interesting angle! Thanks for putting that in my head.

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fengshui.livejournal.com

Why is trash necessarily bad? We can store the entire trash output of the entire country for 100 years in less than 500 square miles. That's less than .01% of the area of the United States. Does the degradation of polystyrene doesn't have substantial toxic byproducts?

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I'm not sure I understand the argument. I can store moldy food in my fridge, in a container where it won't hurt anything else, but that doesn't make it good! At the very least, I can think of more appealing uses for 500 square miles than "landfill." Landfills also keep even things that don't need to be trash -- like food -- from degrading the way they could in other circumstances. Finally, making a lot of trash means that a lot of things whose manufacture has environmental costs are nonetheless being treated as disposable, and thus manufactured more often.

Styrofoam's specific trash badness has two aspects: first, it stays trash a long time (estimates seem to be on the order of several hundred years). Second, it can cause some water weirdness in landfills. Obviously other plastics are its co-conspirators in this last one, but when landfills get waterlogged, trash that breaks down nastily can get toxins into that water, which inevitably eventually overflows, getting crap into groundwater. Incinerating styrofoam is also not such a good idea except with sophisticated systems to capture the toxic gasses it releases; there are, of course, regulations about this which we can all hope that incinerators scrupulously follow.

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ceo

I avoid that problem by using a Navy mug, which are pretty much unbreakable (and conveniently double as throwing weapons should your ship get boarded by enemy commandos).

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A Navy mug?! I am intrigued. Tell me more.

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keyne.livejournal.com

From:

jss

Now now, this is one of those instances where Caps Matter. The difference between "a navy mug" and "a Navy mug" is similar to the difference between "I have to help my uncle Jack off a horse" and "I have to help my uncle jack off a horse."

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cruiser.livejournal.com

Step 1: Go talk to that recruiter guy
Step 2: Sign on the dotted line
Step 3: Go through boot camp
Step 4: Go to a ship & get a cool nearly unbreakable mug (your name printed on it = extra$)

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You make it sound like a lot less fun.

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cruiser.livejournal.com

Alternatively, you can go to ebay, search for Navy Mug USS Chancellorsville and buy one for $8.80 - ceo can tell you if this is the kind he means. If there's a particular ship you'd rather have one from, I can help you track one down.

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ayse.livejournal.com

Heh. I was just about to post the same URL as

dancingwolfgrrl (not replying to that comment so it can be edited to fix markup). The general idea is that glass cups are better overall, in part because glass recycling is so close to glass manufacturing. The material recycles (gets reused to make the same sort of item) rather than downcycles (gets reused to make some other sort of item).

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I like the "recycle" vs. "downcycle" framing -- I've wondered about that before but never had words to put it in. Thanks.

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*high five*

Aluminum also recycles especially brilliantly (although there are some vague health concerns about aluminum and food), and in general, metals do much better than plastic.

Glass has the special advantage that it's not especially resource-intensive to make in the first place, though, which is slick. I have a special love for when normal materials turn out to be eco-friendly, because there are shockingly few exceptions to the rule that anything you buy used is better for the world than something bought new, and "buy these new, environmentally-friendly bamboo whatzits" drives me bonkers :)

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ayse.livejournal.com

My main concern about aluminium and food is with acid foods, which tend to etch it. Coffee and tea being acid, I'm not keen on using alumnium for coffee cups.

And given my experience as a LEED AP and doing green design since before it was fashionable, I'm kind of burning out on new materials, myself. And there is no way that buying a new product will ever save anything anywhere.

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The concern I hear most often with aluminium is about Alzheimer's Disease. (http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/17/suppl_2/17) I don't personally worry about it in water bottles, but I think your caution about acidic liquids is probably sensible! I always thought steel had a higher manufacturing cost than aluminium, but it looks like I actually made that up.

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harimad.livejournal.com

There's a HUGE causation/correlation problem with the association between Alzheimer's and aluminum.

Since buying something new is environmentally a poor choice, what about buying a used mug?

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opadit.livejournal.com

So sad! I've kept a mug in my locker at law school and used it all 3 years.

Would you please e-mail me your street address (my lj username at gmail) in case I happen to stumble upon an interesting coffee mug sometime this weekend?

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