Seed-Based Coffee Cups Would Replace Idaho Trash With New Trees
In case you were wondering after seeing this headline if you were in for a tree-hugging-esk, sympathy-mustering attempt to appeal to your good nature, then you were right. So, atop the soapbox I go.
How have I never heard of this? This is actually a fantastic idea hatched about five years apparently, that could save the planet millions of discarded Styrofoam coffee cups. It's so simple it's absurd.
This guy, Alex Henige, was inspired by a mound of garbage he saw on some roadway a few years back. Henige is the Chief Executive Officer of Reduce.Reuse.Grow, a company he founded in 2015 that creates alternatives to using environmentally damaging products, such as plastic and Styrofoam.
We've all seen the end of the Disney film,"Wall-E," and if you haven't, you need to watch the whole thing. Whether you like to believe it, that's going to be us, probably in the next 100 years.
If you've watched the movie, then you know. The ship lands, and all the obese, bewildered passengers, take their first steps back on Earth after the planet was overcome with garbage and could no longer sustain life...so they thought. Cue the Peter Gabriel song.
According to the video from 2015, more than 140 billion coffee cups are discarded every year, and that's just in the United States. A coffee cup you can reuse, and bury. I know I'd rather have my children shaded by a tree, than being buzzed by flies from a planet that will soon be one giant, lifeless, rotating landfill, if more people don't come up with ideas like this dude did. These cups also breakdown in a matter of days, rather than decades.
It seems like the kind of idea we should be in support of to me.