„What is this? Where am I? Is it heaven?“ thought the Cup, looking around for white walls and heavy machines producing his brothers and sisters. The Cup is feeling all fresh and clean, ready to go to discover this colorful world that he heard about from his older relatives. They said, that The Earth is full of different trees and animals and people, there‘s snow and rain and sunshine, or even all at once! The Cup was really excited to enter this world-of-dreams, even that he knew that he won‘t see his family up there. Only a few of his older relatives came back to the factory – that‘s where these stories about The Beautiful Earth came from. Also, older cups mentioned that almost all of the cups choose to travel around The Colorful Earth and never come back to the black-grey-white factory because it is so boring in here.
Someone said, „Pack these!“ when Cup‘s grandma was telling him about Central Park and all the friendly people and dogs there. They waved goodbye to each other. The Cup and his brothers and sisters were collected to a huge box and wrapped tightly. Then they heard people talking, car‘s doors closing and driving for an infinite amount of time. Well, actually, it was 30 minutes, but cups are very impatient – they asked and asked all over again „Are we there yet?“.
And then, they were there yet. They came to a cozy café where everything smells coffee and blueberry pie. Short-haired girl unwrapped a box of cups, took one of the piles and laid them out on the counter near the coffee machine. „I love it there!” said the Cup. He looked around and saw a sweet couple, who were playfully fighting over the last bite of the pie. By the window, he saw a tired student, who was working on his computer. “Hope I could help him” – thought the Cup. “You can’t, but I can” – arrogantly said one of the coffee beans, sitting on an espresso machine. Normally Cup would’ve said something back, but now he’s still enchanted by this place and all the people here. Some are with different color hair, there are children with their mommies and some boys with soccer outfits. In the line standing across the counter, there’s a lot of people. And the cup just loved staring at them. At first, there was a girl – pink hair, ordered Frappe, cranberry muffin, went to sit outside because there was sun shining. Then came a Man and ordered mid-size Cappuccino. The Barista grabbed the Cup and quickly poured some steamed foamed milk and espresso shot; it felt wet and warm, it felt goooood. Then sprinkled some cinnamon and placed a white plastic lid on the top. Gave the Cup to the Man and took 3 dollars cash. And that was the last time the Cup saw his Barista. He liked her. And that plastic hat was not comfortable.
But then, the most wonderful things happened. The man looked very stressful and changed the cup holding hand a few times while looking in the pockets for his keys. But that’s even better for the Cup – he saw everything around him – all these tall buildings and dogs playing on the grass, people jogging around, shiny cars (all in different colour!), grey birds, smelled the takeaway Mexican food from across the street, felt the wind tickling his bottom, heard a flying airplane and some heavy music from boy’s earphone while Cup and his Man stopped by the passage waiting for a traffic light to get green. Everything was great.
Suddenly, the Man slowed down a bit. The Cup thought that something interesting is going to happen, he felt that. The Man quickly lifted up the Cup to his lips, took a few sips of warmish coffee and… threw him away. The Cup was in the trash bin in the middle of his dream city. Together with a banana peel, pack of cigarettes and some paper brochures. The Cup felt horrible and unwanted. He didn‘t know that it was his purpose – to serve a single portion of coffee and then to be thrown away with all the other trash – he‘s not even recyclable!
500 000 000 000 disposable cups are manufactured around the world every year, that’s over 70 single-use cups for every person on the Earth. Disposable paper cups contain 5% polyurethane plastic, making composting and recycling of disposable cups extremely rare. 4 000 000 000 trees, or 35% of the total trees chopped down, are used in paper industries. Very little recycled paper is used to make disposable cups because of the health risk. 70% of the world’s paper comes from forests, not from plantations or recycling. Choose your cup wisely.
Written by Viktorija Michailovaitė, “EcoWrite” contest 1st place winner
