Refill, Please. Would you bring your own coffee cup?

[Parke Ladd]

In North America & Europe coffee consumption is about 1/3 that of tap water. Globally, nearly 7 million metric tons of coffee were produced last year alone. In 2006, Starbucks reported that they gave out 2.3 billion paper cupsfor use at their stores.

A recent forum started by Pat Coyle, Why Doesn't Starbucks Recycle?, stirred up some interesting thinking from several members of the Smaller Indiana family.

One of the more compelling ideas was to re-use your own coffee cup. The thinking, of course, is that if everyone simply brought their own mug on a continual basis, we would eliminate a lot of waste in Indiana.

While this idea is not a new one, it's also not a well implemented one. So, would you be disciplined enough, would you be bold enough,...

Would you be willing to take your own mug?

Also, we want to know who the biological properties experts are. If you're the expert in bio-degradable/renewable resources, please, let us know. We want to know if creating a 100% bio-degradable coffee cup is possible and what it would take to do so. A "Cradle-to-Cradle" type of product.

[Stacey R. Davis]

I have a couple myself. You can't tell that they're any different than regular hard plastic when using them. They come in several sizes and styles.