As college students, I know we all drink way more coffee than we should. Whether it’s hot or iced, black or sweet, it has an impact. There are a few ways that you can lessen the impact your caffeine habits have on the environment. The best place to start is by bringing your own mug to your favorite coffee shop. Many shops will give you a discount on it too! On CMU’s campus, Starbucks offers 10 cents off and Java City will charge you the price of a small and fill your mug up. It pays to be sustainable! But, if you forget (and we all do occasionally), let’s talk about how we can dispose of a single-use cup sustainably.
For a hot cup: take the plastic lid off the top and rinse all remaining liquid off it. Then, recycle just the lid into a plastic receptacle around campus. If you have a cardboard heat sleeve on the cup, that can go into a paper receptacle. Finally, the cup itself is not able to be recycled. I’d recommend rinsing it out and keeping it in your bag to reuse next time or maybe even repurposing it as a small plant pot or a pencil cup. Another option is that it could be composted in an industrial facility like the one the CMU dining halls uses for food waste disposal. So, if you hang onto it until you’re ready to use a meal swipe, it can be disposed of along with extra food when you’re ready to leave. It also could, as a last resort, be trashed.
For a cold up: take the lid and plastic cup itself apart and rinse any remaining liquid off. These can both go into a plastic receptacle. If you have a plastic straw, this will need to be either rinsed out and reused or they will need to be trashed. They can’t be recycled due to the logistics of their small size in recycling facilities. It’s best to use reusable metal straws, paper straws, or skipping out on a straw altogether. The first of the three R’s is reduce for a reason!
Speaking of the three R’s, remember: reduce, reuse, and then recycle! The order makes a difference. Use less, reuse what you have, and — if you’re done with it, recycle or compost anything you can before turning to the trash can!