Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Convenience Comes at a Price

Betacup from the betacup on Vimeo.


Every year North America consumes 58 billion paper coffee cups, most of which are recyclable. Although convenient these 58 billion cups require 20 million trees and 12 billion gallons of water just to be produced. Tony Daniels and the product development firm Mutopo have founded the "Betacup" challenge. Designed to help solve the issue of inconvenient and bulky travel mugs, "Betacup" is asking the public to help them create the design solution to the paper cup wastage that plagues the U.S. The video above gives some compelling facts on how wasteful we are as a nation and explains the issue on a more in depth scale. Check it out and think of what you can do to help.

ORIGINAL LINK

1 comment:

  1. It is good that emphasis is being placed on environmentally sound redesigns of disposable products, it is a step in the right

    direction. I do wonder though, is the motivation behind the redesign simply to reduce waste or is it also aimed at increasing

    awareness? I ask this because in my opinion the best way of dealing with the large waste created by paper cups is to simply

    implement the correct sorting procedures to allow existing cups to be recycled. Once the cups containing the PE / wax coating are

    seperated from normal paper waste it should be possible to recycle the raw materials.

    Robert Daniel
    Paper Cups

    ReplyDelete