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Clay cups work fine in India and they are sustainable <http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/&#62 http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-in

by gorm 16y ago

Clay cups work fine in India and they are sustainable <http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/&#62 http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/&#6...;

Tichy 16y ago
Link doesn't work, but if it is a proven concept, might be an easy win for the competition? Edit: fixed link http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/ http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/ Now if somebody could solve the problem of mud dissolving into the chai/coffee, it might be a winner.
- GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
  Where I lived in India many years ago they used glass cups not clay. I have a vivid memory of sitting at a roadside stall, enjoying my cup of chai and then watching in horror as the chaiwalla squatted beside the gutter with a pitcher of cold water and rinsed out the cups using his grimy fingers to swish the water around. Yes, disposable clay cups would be a major improvement.
  - retube 16y ago
    I've seen both used. glass cups are probably more common but clay is still used in plenty of places.
patio11 16y ago
Sustainable just means "more flattering to my sense of aesthetics than the alternatives." It is highly non-obvious to me that producing paper cups is more resource intensive than producing clay cups, or that waste produced by clay cups is easier to store than waste produced by paper cups. Clay cups, for example, require dredging up a whole lot of water and river mud, which (despite the fact that it is done inefficiently by poor people, which is apparently the working definition for "environmentally conscious" for reasons I do not pretend to understand) is not an ecologically neutral action. Scale it to Starbucks level consumption and that is an awful lot of river mud. 11 million metric tonnes, by my back of the envelope math. Plus whatever energy you use in construction of the cups, which aren't exactly carving themselves out of the mud in a carbon-neutral fashion. This could be averted, of course, if people would simply consume less coffee, but that might be a bridge too far for the latte liberals at Starbucks. I'm sure they'll find a cup which looks absolutely nothing like a paper cup, which will ostentatiously proclaim that consuming this cup of coffee makes you a better person than consuming that other cup of coffee, which is about 99% of the purpose of environmentalism: social signaling of moral worth among rich people for whom traditional religion holds little attraction.
- retube 16y ago
  there's a detergent in the UK whose recent ad campaign made much of it's new "greenness" due to the fact that it now used 90% less packaging. This is because they changed the packaging from glass to plastic, and were measuring by weight.
- Tichy 16y ago
  Maybe some other material could be found, that is less costly to produce than paper or clay. I think for paper a lot of chemicals have to be used? Didn't McDonalds experiment with "eatable" packages? Some grain (sweetcorn?) might have the property of being easily molded into cups (think ice cream cones). Then add some wax to make it water proof? Except I suppose wax would melt from hot coffee? Also, growing corn requires water, too. Just as an example - you don't have to treat sweetcorn with chemicals to make it moldable. Maybe a lot of properties of paper are not required for coffee cups, so a simpler material could be used.
  - what 16y ago
    Are you talking about PLA and the like? It's pretty much a biodegradable/compostable plastic made from corn starch or sugarcane. I've seen utensils made from it in some cafeterias. But they can make lots of things with it, here they make coffee cups: http://www.cagreen.ca/Hot%20Cups-0 http://www.cagreen.ca/Hot%20Cups-0
    - Tichy 16y ago
      I wonder if the makers of the betacup challenge were aware of that - I suppose not...
      - what 16y ago
        They might still consider it "wasteful" since the same number of cups would be thrown away. But I believe they can be made with the waste products from the processing of corn or sugarcane that already happens.
- 16y ago

by gorm 16y ago

Clay cups work fine in India and they are sustainable <http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/&#62 http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/&#6...;

Tichy 16y ago

Link doesn't work, but if it is a proven concept, might be an easy win for the competition? Edit: fixed link http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/ http://chaipilgrimage.com/2008/09/14/the-indian-clay-cup/ Now if somebody could solve the problem of mud dissolving into the chai/coffee, it might be a winner.

GiraffeNecktie 16y ago
Where I lived in India many years ago they used glass cups not clay. I have a vivid memory of sitting at a roadside stall, enjoying my cup of chai and then watching in horror as the chaiwalla squatted beside the gutter with a pitcher of cold water and rinsed out the cups using his grimy fingers to swish the water around. Yes, disposable clay cups would be a major improvement.
- retube 16y ago
  I've seen both used. glass cups are probably more common but clay is still used in plenty of places.

patio11 16y ago

Sustainable just means "more flattering to my sense of aesthetics than the alternatives." It is highly non-obvious to me that producing paper cups is more resource intensive than producing clay cups, or that waste produced by clay cups is easier to store than waste produced by paper cups. Clay cups, for example, require dredging up a whole lot of water and river mud, which (despite the fact that it is done inefficiently by poor people, which is apparently the working definition for "environmentally conscious" for reasons I do not pretend to understand) is not an ecologically neutral action. Scale it to Starbucks level consumption and that is an awful lot of river mud. 11 million metric tonnes, by my back of the envelope math. Plus whatever energy you use in construction of the cups, which aren't exactly carving themselves out of the mud in a carbon-neutral fashion. This could be averted, of course, if people would simply consume less coffee, but that might be a bridge too far for the latte liberals at Starbucks. I'm sure they'll find a cup which looks absolutely nothing like a paper cup, which will ostentatiously proclaim that consuming this cup of coffee makes you a better person than consuming that other cup of coffee, which is about 99% of the purpose of environmentalism: social signaling of moral worth among rich people for whom traditional religion holds little attraction.

retube 16y ago
there's a detergent in the UK whose recent ad campaign made much of it's new "greenness" due to the fact that it now used 90% less packaging. This is because they changed the packaging from glass to plastic, and were measuring by weight.
Tichy 16y ago
Maybe some other material could be found, that is less costly to produce than paper or clay. I think for paper a lot of chemicals have to be used? Didn't McDonalds experiment with "eatable" packages? Some grain (sweetcorn?) might have the property of being easily molded into cups (think ice cream cones). Then add some wax to make it water proof? Except I suppose wax would melt from hot coffee? Also, growing corn requires water, too. Just as an example - you don't have to treat sweetcorn with chemicals to make it moldable. Maybe a lot of properties of paper are not required for coffee cups, so a simpler material could be used.
- what 16y ago
  Are you talking about PLA and the like? It's pretty much a biodegradable/compostable plastic made from corn starch or sugarcane. I've seen utensils made from it in some cafeterias. But they can make lots of things with it, here they make coffee cups: http://www.cagreen.ca/Hot%20Cups-0 http://www.cagreen.ca/Hot%20Cups-0
  - Tichy 16y ago
    I wonder if the makers of the betacup challenge were aware of that - I suppose not...
    - what 16y ago
      They might still consider it "wasteful" since the same number of cups would be thrown away. But I believe they can be made with the waste products from the processing of corn or sugarcane that already happens.
16y ago