Meadow Creek Goes Green
According to the paper industry, Americans consumed an estimated 23 billion paper coffee cups in 2010.”
That is 23,000,000,000. In one country. In one year.
Many of these cups are made from recycled materials, however, most recycled paper products only contain 10% post consumer materials. That still leaves us with nearly 21 billion cups made from new material.
During his Ted Talk in 2008, Chris Jordan gave some staggering numbers regarding the paper cup consumption in the United States, but his real impact came through his photography.
On average, Americans consume 410,000 paper cups every 15 minutes.”
This photo contains 410,000 paper cups…the average amount consumed by Americans in fifteen minutes.
Remove the environmental impact and consequences that these numbers have and instead look at the fiscal ramifications. A conservative estimate on the 2010 paper cup consumption cost, when you consider that an inexpensive 16 ounce paper cup is $.04, is $920,000,000. For that price tag, one could purchase 20,445 BMWs. Or 2642 homes in Seattle. Or a professional sports team…with money left over.
Now, here at Meadow Creek, our numbers are not nearly as staggering by comparison.
Meadow Creek average consumption is 2000 cups a month. That works out to 24,000 cups consumed a year. When you consider that there are typically 250 business days in a year, that leaves us with an average daily cup consumption of 96 cups per day.
We think there is a better way.
In an effort to reduce our carbon footprint and limit our contribution to these staggering figures, we will be providing two new Meadow Creek Business Center mugs (free of charge) to tenants of Meadow Creek. It is our sincere hope that with access to a more sustainable option, we can cut back on our paper cup consumption and in a small way do our part. Additional mugs for your clients are available to purchase for only $2 a piece. While there will still be paper cups available, we do implore you to think twice before using them as we make this step towards making this place we call home a better place.
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