Three minor victories

In my last post, I wrote about my attempts to avoid disposable cups, particularly styrofoam, and disposable plastic water bottles. I mentioned that we could take a 5-gallon cooler of water for the high school swim team, but it might seem weird. But, inspired by a friend’s comment on the post, I decided to do just that. I found the pump pictured below on the website of a major online retailer with 2-day shipping. I knew there would be a tradeoff, with the waste associated with packaging and shipping the pump offsetting the reduced plastic-water-bottle waste, but I hoped the pump would make a positive impact. I had to sell my kids on the idea, and we compromised — some bottled water for the bus ride, and this pump + purified water for the meet.

The swim team loved the water pump so much that they asked for it to be brought back to the next meet.

Success! My family already uses refillable 5-gallon water bottles at home for drinking water, so I took a full one of those and this pump. It was a hit. I thought maybe it was just the novelty, but athletes drink lots of water, and are used to carrying their own water bottles to practice. A simple reminder to bring them to the meet was all that was needed.

We weren’t on the schedule to bring snacks for the next meet a week later, but I was at work and my wife texted me to ask where the pump was. Apparently, some of the swimmers had asked if we could bring back the water/pump. They liked it. We were happy to oblige! And, since it was half empty, it was a lot less heavy and easier to haul into the pool area.

The second victory was fun. On my way home after working a long Friday evening officiating a swim meet (not high school), I decided to treat myself to a hot fudge shake from the local dairy and burger joint. I keep a straw in my car to reuse when needed, but I knew that this dairy serves their small shakes in styrofoam cups. However, I also knew that they used to serve them in paper cups, and that they still stocked the paper cups for other things, like soda. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t go for using my own reusable cup — it wouldn’t fit onto the shake mixer machine anyway. So it was time to try out the strategy I had devised.

“I’d like a small hot fudge shake. But I can’t have plastic, so could I have it in a paper cup please?” Aha! I thought, they can’t deny someone who can’t have plastic, which is more or less true, thanks to my commitment.

“So, you want a medium, then?”

“Well, can I just have it in one of those blue cups instead of the styrofoam?”

“A medium?”

Maybe a couple of pictures I found online will help explain.

The small comes in styrofoam (with 24g protein! It’s virtually health food!) The medium comes in a teal-colored cup, but that’s sort of blue. The small cup I wanted was the royal blue one. So what did I say?

“A medium will be fine, thanks.”

One thing I didn’t think of — it came with a plastic lid (not pictured). Next time, I’ll just say “no lid.” And I’ll try harder to get the small shake in the blue cup. I could stand to minimize the caloric intake. 🙂

Finally, I’ve been wondering how I can purchase some juice in something other than plastic. Orange juice is a possibility, because you can still get FCOJ at many places. For those of you who don’t recall the movie Trading Places (Sell!, Sell!), FCOJ stands for frozen concentrated orange juice. And I’ve started doing that. But my family is big on cranberry juice. And while American Airlines has no trouble getting cranberry juice (“Is cran-apple OK?”) in aluminum cans, at the local stores, it’s pretty much all plastic.

Plastic, plastic everywhere. But wait — organic cranberry juice comes in glass!

But next to the regular cranberry juice, the cranberry juice cocktail, the cran-peach and white cranberry and cran-grape and cran-cherry and cran-everything — is “all-natural” or “Just Cranberry” or “100% unsweetened cranberry.” You know, the organic cranberry juice. It comes in glass bottles with steel caps. I decided to try some.

My mom tells me that I used to eat whole, raw cranberries out of the bag when I was a kid. While poking them with needle and thread and stringing them with popcorn to make garland for the Christmas tree, I guess I ate more than I strung. So I’m okay with bitter, I guess.

But WOW that 100% unsweetened cranberry “nectar” is potent. I could drink it straight if I had to, but it’s kinda pricey for that, and definitely not sweet. I found that if I dilute it 1:1 or even 1:2 with water, and then add a spoonful of sugar (sing it!), it is pretty much like the pre-mixed name-brand kind. I haven’t done the cost analysis, and the organic juice is significantly more expensive, but with the dilution factor, I think drinking it this way might come out to about the same price per glass. And the color is so beautifully intense! It’s good for mixed drinks as well (add a little to your margarita for a colorful punch!)

As a chemist, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention at this point that the color of cranberry juice is actually due to a color-changing acid-base indicator, and lends itself to some cool DIY science experiments.

Before I wrap up, I’ve learned from some of you that glass recycling isn’t universally available, and that makes me sad. So for you, juice bottled in glass might not be that much better for sustainability than juice bottled in plastic. That is an important issue, but one that I’ll need to save for a future post.

How can we alleviate concerns about reusable cups?

As part of my year-long endeavor to decrease my consumption of single-use plastic, I wrote last week about my attempts to use reusable cups at a variety of local establishments. I’m particularly trying to avoid Styrofoam.

It’s not that difficult to keep a resolution not to use disposable plastic beverage containers. I can do it for myself easily enough. I don’t get drinks at Sonic or Chick-Fil-A, where I can’t use my own cups. (Actually, I just don’t go to Sonic.) Instead, I get the same drink at the Casey’s convenience store down the road (for less money), get a can of Coke Zero from my own fridge, or skip a drink altogether.

Reusable containers in my regular rotation: coffee cup (Thermos), soda cup (Yeti), water bottle (Camelbak).

But it’s more challenging once there are other people involved. My kids take their own water bottles to swim practices, but at meets, parents sign up to bring snacks (and drinks) for the whole team. This means water. Cases of bottled water – which I resolved not to purchase. But while my family supports my choice, they made no such resolution. We could, I suppose, take a 5-gallon cooler of water, and the swimmers could use their own water bottles. But what if they don’t have any? Will we take reusable cups for everyone? And won’t they think we’re weird? Yeah, we’ll be taking the bottled water.

I’ve already learned things from readers of this blog, as I hoped would happen as I began chronicling this experiment. One thing that seriously — literally — hadn’t occurred to me was that there would be people opposed to establishments allowing customers to use reusable cups. So, another barrier to changing the infrastructure to encourage more people to limit their plastic waste is this opposition. I foolishly thought there wouldn’t be any, or rather, I just didn’t think about it.

The main opposition I have received is that people are “grossed out” by the thought of someone else’s unsanitary cup possibly contaminating their own beverage. Or, in the case of the food service workers, of having to touch someone’s unsanitary cup. Here are my paraphrases of things I have heard so far:

• I wouldn’t want someone else’s contaminated cup touching the top of the dispenser.
• Many people don’t clean their cups. I’ve worked in food service, and it’s bad enough having to handle the money they produce with dirty hands or from sweaty bodily locations.
• What if a whole pitcher gets germs from one person’s contaminated cup?

This isn’t a quantitative study, but it seems that there are several who feel this way. I don’t know if they are in the majority, or minority. But the gist of this is that, given the choice, some people would presumably choose not to visit (or work at) an establishment that encourages customers to bring their own cups.

We’re not going back to restaurants that wash dishes. Fast-food and convenience is here to stay. But I just can’t accept that mounds of Styrofoam waste is the only alternative. As I’ve mentioned, there are plenty of places that have serve-yourself drinks or promote the use of reusable cups, but this is not yet the norm. To be fair, the image below is supposed to be showing cups that CFA is sending for recycling. Or actually, “downcycling” into name badges and bench legs.

From a story about how Chick-Fil-A recycles some of their cup waste.

As long as customers prefer (or at least accept) their drinks in Styrofoam, this is the result. I’ve seen it reported that Americans alone discard 25 billion Styrofoam cups per year (or 82 per person). I can’t verify this number, but it seems reasonable.

So, I’m interested in what ideas you have. What studies you know about. How would you go about reducing the single-use plastic waste at restaurants? Are there surveys of public opinion regarding how drinks are dispensed? Do you avoid getting drinks at places where you serve yourself? Are there studies of the cleanliness or bacteria counts of drink dispensers at self-serve versus employee-serve establishments? Is there something that would convince you to support reusable cups instead of disposable?

I’m doing this experiment to raise awareness — including my own awareness. What can you tell me?

Velcro, kleenex, band-aids–styrofoam?

After I wrote last week’s post, I discovered that styrofoam.com is a real website. It redirects to a DuPont product page describing their extruded polystyrene (XPS) “foam board” product used for insulation. It’s a great product. I installed some when I finished my basement many years ago. It’s similar to the craft foam that you can but at hobby stores. Kind of “crunchy” when you squeeze it or push sticks into it.

But this isn’t what comes to mind for most of us when we think of styrofoam. Most of us are thinking of the expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam products used for food and drink containers. You know the ones: every cup at Sonic or Chick-Fil-A, or the clam-shell takeout containers at your favorite Chinese restaurant.

The name Styrofoam^TM is derived from its building block styrene, which in turn, was named after styrax, the resin from the American sweetgum tree, Liquidambar styraciflua, which also contains cinnamaldehyde. Indeed, some styrene can also be found in cinnamon, so you have likely ingested (and enjoyed) consuming it along with your apple pie or snickerdoodle.

I’ve been concerned for some time about how much waste I’ve added to the stream when I’ve had one of my beloved Coke Zeros. I know it doesn’t break down readily. I’ve been to the lake and have seen floating wooden docks built on styrofoam platforms, and while they get dirty, they never seem to degrade. And I know I’ve been thinking about this for a while, because when I looked in my pantry just now, I found four 32-ounce styrofoam cups that I have attempted to reuse and refill, rather than simply buying another one each time. Reduce, reuse, recycle — right?

But aren’t styrofoam cups mostly air? Perhaps, but one 32-ounce styrofoam cup contains as much plastic as a typical “red Solo® cup” — about 8 grams (see photo). The Solo cup is also polystyrene, just without the air blown into it. So both styles of cup contain about the same amount of plastic.

Masses (in grams) of cups I had in my cupboard — three 32-ounce beverage cups from area establishments, and one 16-ounce Solo® cup

Polystyrene of any type can be marked with recycle code 6. But there is no market for recycling polystyrene, and never really has been. My local recycling station doesn’t accept it, and yours probably doesn’t either. And even if it does accept it, it’s likely that the polystyrene still ends up in the landfill.

Now, I try to always use my Yeti® cup that looks like it would hold 32 ounces, but actually holds 24. (I use less ice though, so still get enough Coke Zero.) But this is easier to do at some establishments than at others. Of those represented in the photo above, I have no problem using my own cup at Schlotzsky’s® or Casey’s. Casey’s even gives me a discount. But it’s a no-go at Chick-Fil-A. I tried to reuse that styrofoam Chick-Fil-A cup there once, and the person behind the counter said they couldn’t do that. I barked that I didn’t want a new cup, and she relented — but I don’t think she was supposed to, and look in her eyes said that I might be scaring her a little bit. I decided it would be best if I didn’t try that again, so now I just don’t get a drink when I eat there. (The sandwich comes in a foil-and-paper wrapper, and the fries are in cardboard, so I’ll still be allowed to have those during my 2020 experiment.)

Read the fine print: $20 Chick-Fil-A tumblers — that cannot be used at Chick-Fil-A

It’s ironic, too. During the holiday shopping season, my local CFA was selling reusable, branded CFA cups. But you can’t actually use these cups at Chick-Fil-A. I asked. It’s for hygiene reasons. Mind you, they have no problem refilling the foam cups that you bought on your current visit (“May I refresh your drink?”), so if there were an individual likely to cause issues with cup hygiene at CFA, presumably it only takes effect once the cup leaves the premises.

And it’s hit-or-miss whether a business you might frequent will support your efforts to reduce waste of single-use plastic. Tropical Smoothie has been in town for a year or two. My daughters like to get smoothies there, and one of them even went at 4am to the grand opening of the location closest to our home and stood in line to get free smoothies for a year. At my age, I don’t need that kind of sugar in my diet, but I stopped by a few months back to try one. I brought my Yeti and asked if they could use it. The teenager behind the counter seemed hesitant (“I don’t know if we can do that”) and, having earlier learned my lesson at Chick-Fil-A, I didn’t press the issue. I just took the smoothie in the styrofoam cup.

But my daughter noticed in a social media post before Christmas from a new location in the town next door that they were offering refillable smoothie mugs. When I made my own post about this, a friend replied that the other town next door (in the other direction) offered these all the time. I got in the car and went there that day.

Sure enough, they did, and they even had two styles of “Whirley Mugs,” so I could get one for each of my two kids could and they could tell them apart. And, in case you can’t read the sign in the image, they cost $5 each and you get a 5% discount every time you use it. The young lady who sold them to me even offered that if my girls used them in the drive-through, to let them know that they had a “Whirley Mug.” That way, she said, they could just pour the smoothie directly into the mug rather than having to pour it over from the cup they had already put it into. She gets it.

I’m not sure why this has to be such a struggle.

Today a friend asked me if I thought what I and some others are doing–refusing plastic, reusing, etc.–would really make any difference. Wouldn’t there need to be regulations to discourage plastic use, for example? As our group talked about this over dinner, another said that perhaps if we keep trying, and this evolves into a bit of a movement, while there are at the same time businesses and manufacturers that also are trying to mitigate the problem from the other side, it becomes easier to meet in the middle.

As I researched this post, I found a story that said that Chick-Fil-A ships “[b]ags of used cups… to a special recycling facility… [to] become the legs to benches… [or] writing pens and name badges for employees. ” This is not what I mean. (Click the link to the story to see a photo of a huge pile of styrofoam cups.) Instead, they could simply refuse to contribute to the production of the styrofoam in the first place. They could, at the very least, accommodate customers who desire to use their own reusable cups. Starbucks doesn’t seem to have a “hygiene problem.” They happily put coffee into my cup, and give me a discount. Or they would, if I wanted to spend $5 on a grande nonfat latte more than a few times a year.

Another story I came across had the headline “Maine becomes the first state to ban Styrofoam.” According to the story, ” The law, which will go into effect January 1, 2021, prohibits restaurants, caterers, coffee shops and grocery stores from using the to-go foam containers because they cannot be recycled in Maine. ” That’s a good start, even if the reasoning isn’t quite what I’d hope. Even if styrofoam could be recycled, plastic is simply not truly recyclable in the way that other materials, such as metals or glass, are. But that’s a story for another day.

And not all states will go the way that Maine is. In 2015, according to a Dallas Morning News story, there were at least a dozen Texas cities with bans on single-use plastic bags. Dallas didn’t ban them but attempted to impose a 5-cent fee per bag. In Dallas and in Laredo, businesses sued, backed by lobbying from the plastics industry and others. They won. In 2018, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that bag bans violate the Texas Solid Waste Disposal Act, and all such bans can no longer be enforced.

As for me, I’m making mental note of where I can eat that will allow me to use my refillable cup, and planning to frequent those places more and other places less. It’s all part of the experiment.