Increase In Sustainable Coffee Cups

We're so happy to see that reusable coffee cups are on trend now.

Single use coffee cups have been described as a "silent catastrophe" and we agree.

Here are nine alarming facts about single use coffee cups from the popular Keep Cup company:

1. Disposable paper cups contain 5% polyurethane plastic, making composting and recycling of disposable cups extremely rare.

2. Half a trillion disposable cups are manufactured annually around the world; that's over 70 disposable cups for every person on the planet.

3. Most plastic used in the world today is for single-use items.

4. 4 billion trees, or 35% of the total trees chopped down, are used in paper industries.

5. 1 tonne of paper consumes 98 tonnes of resources in manufacture.

6. Globally, we consume nearly 300 million tonnes of paper each year; most made from virgin pulp.

7. Very little recycled paper is used to make disposable cups due to health risk concerns.

8. 70% of the world's paper comes from diminishing forests, not from plantations or recycling.

9. Consumer waste has increased more than tenfold over the 20th Century, from 40kg to 560kg of waste per person, per year. (Source)

This is very alarming considering 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed each day around the world, according to this source. This is why we must make small changes each day to move towards a green sustainable future. Lucky for us, music is a platform we can spread the word about change!