Eco-Friendly Products

A 1994 Life Cycle Assessment of different kinds of disposable and reusable cups by University of Victoria chemistry professor Martin B. Hocking challenged conventional wisdom about the environmental benefits of reusable cups. After documenting the amount of energy involved in producing and reusing the various types of cups, the study concluded that from an energy perspective, paper and particularly polystyrene cups are often a more energy efficient option than some reusables. When accounting for the energy required to produce a ceramic cup, for example, it would take 1,006 uses before its energy use would break even with the energy used to produce the same number off polystyrene cups. When accounting for the energy used to wash the ceramic cup between uses, its energy consumption could never break even with polystyrene, because the water used to wash the cup requires more energy than the production of a polystyrene cup. The difference was less extreme when comparing other types of cups—it would take only 15 uses for the energy consumed by a glass mug to break even with that of 15 paper cups, for example. In any case, the assessment prompts us to consider the complex factors at play in the environmental impact of products, including those we automatically think of as more environmentally sound such as reusable shopping bags, cups and other durable containers.

When it comes to disposable versus reusable cups, production energy is certainly an important variable to consider when judging their environmental impact. However, waste disposal, recycle-ability, toxic releases from factories, and the environmental effects of extracting, harvesting or synthesizing their materials are other key variables in sustainability. Polystyrene, for example, may take much less energy to produce than a ceramic mug, but the fact that it is not recyclable and takes centuries to biodegrade creates a waste-disposal problem. Paper cups may biodegrade more readily, but the factories that produce them release high amounts of toxic effluents, use a great deal of water and energy and may contribute to deforestation. Plastic cups, both disposable and reusable, rely on petroleum for their production, a non-renewable resource that can cause damage to soil, air, water and wildlife when it is extracted, refined and spilled.

Because every product has an environmental impact in some form, it is not always simple to find the most environmentally sound option. While items such as reusable grocery bags, reusable cups and reusable plastic containers seem like better choices than their disposable counterparts, we must take care to inform ourselves about their environmental impacts as well and compare our options on a case-by-case basis. A reusable bag made of cotton, for example, requires more energy to produce than one made of recycled polyethylene, and we are also salvaging a material that may have otherwise gone to a landfill when we use the recycled polyethylene bag. In the case of cups, the energy intensity and greenhouse gas emissions of stainless steel mugs compared with ceramic, for example, may make stainless steel a less environmental option, even though its production relies heavily on recycled materials. However, using products made of recycled materials or purchasing second-hand goods instead of new ones generally reduces our environmental impact substantially.