How environmental friendly are you?

[Blazkowicz]

3. If you're sharing a carton/bottle with multiple people then it's neither convenient or hygenic to each go gulping down from the same recepticle.
4. Some cartons aren't exactly designed for scuh behaviour. How would you go about drinking straight from a wine box without looking an idiot?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the fact you don't use a cup is odd, but the fact you can't understand why other people would is weird.

my modus operandi is drinking red wine from the bottle, and sharing it with friends and strangers alike.
it's slight less hygienic or no different from kissing. I don't believe more contact is harmful, the more exposure to people, dirt and stuff you have the stronger your immunitary system.

as for drinking from the wine box I did that the day before yesterday, hum yeah you don't do it for the looks but we have reusable, 25cl plastic cups over there used in punk/squat/misc venues, I used that.
they are bad with strong alcohols (permanent scent and maybe coloration sets in) but prevent litter and are more confortable/beer-safe that the disposable ones.

 

[eastmen]

I have a plastic container with a carbon filter .


Its not on the option list , but its good for about a month of use per carbon filter or there abouts.

 

[Davros]

1. fill cup with coffee
2. drink coffee
3. fill now empty cup with more coffee

100% efficient...

 

[KimB]

Pretty sure my use of cups is just about as environment-friendly as it gets. First, I almost exclusively drink water, so I don't feel the need to wash my glass but every once in a while. Second, I don't use hot water to wash, so the energy costs are nil (except for the cost of pumping the water).

So yeah, I'm pretty darned sure that using styrofoam cups would be vastly vastly less environmentally friendly than this.

 

[Frank]

The fraction used to wash a cup? Pretty much.

1L of water and its transport cost around $0.001. Heater cost is a fraction of the fuel that goes through it in its lifetime, and 50kJ needs about $0.001 of natural gas (assuming 50% efficiency and including delivery charges).

You need 200kJ to make a styrofoam cup. The energy alone would cost $0.005, and I'm not including material cost, delivery cost, disposal cost, etc. There's a reason that they cost several cents each.

Paper needs water too, so you're wrong on that front as well.

Ok, I agree. A ceramic cup is pretty good, a paper cup is the worst. And a styrofoam one is somewhere in-between.

 

[Frank]

On another note: Germany, which gets 20% of it's energy from nuclear plants, is going to dismantle them all right away and switch to green energy like solar and wind to fill the gap. Mostly by encouraging people to do it themselves.

The politicians involved are sure that solar and wind can easily fill the gap. They probably didn't research the land area required to make that happen.

Pretty inefficient and environmentally UNfriendly, if you ask me. But it scores large heaps of votes.

 

[hoho]

On another note: Germany, which gets 20% of it's energy from nuclear plants, is going to dismantle them all right away and switch to green energy like solar and wind to fill the gap.

Nah, they'll just import energy from France that produces it in nuclear plants

The whole Germany ditching nuclear power is pure election campaign and nothing else. Anyone with half a brain should understand how ridiculously stupid it would be to shut the reactors down.

 

[Sxotty]

Nah, they'll just import energy from France that produces it in nuclear plants

The whole Germany ditching nuclear power is pure election campaign and nothing else. Anyone with half a brain should understand how ridiculously stupid it would be to shut the reactors down.

2022 is a long way off. Once people quit freaking out over the Fukishima stuff they will decide to keep using them. They might retire some of the older ones though.

 

[snarfbot]

i thought they were going to end up going with "clean coal" or some such hogwash, germany that is.

i pretty much just run a cup under water for literally 2 seconds, swish it around inside, dump it then rinse it for another 2 seconds.

im not sure how much water that is but it cant be much. like 1/10th of the water to just wash my hands if not less.

and i only do that when im switching between incompatible drinks, like say milk to iced-tea, if its iced-tea to fruit juice, thats fine, if its iced-tea to milk even, thats ok too. its just that the thought of the oldish milk lurking around the bottom of the glass, just kinda grosses me out so i gotta clean it.

lol anyways pretty green imo

 

[Grall]

Once people quit freaking out over the Fukishima stuff they will decide to keep using them.

Maybe when they realize there aren't any compression faultlines running through the baltic sea... Then again, never misunderestimate the stupidity of the common man and the opportunism in politicians...

 

[Xmas]

I think you'd have to be quite inefficient at cleaning a reusable cup to use the same energy as it takes to make and ship a styrofoam cup. However it's true that a lot of seemingly "green" things aren't that good for the environment at all. I believe there's a lot to be said for incinerating plastic garbage for energy over sticking it into landfill or trying to recycle it. Especially if you can use clean burning bioplastics.

I'm single. I don't create enough dirty dishes to fill up a whole dishwasher in any reasonable amount of time.nb

You can get compact dishwashers. Not as efficient, but still handy.

Maybe when they realize there aren't any compression faultlines running through the baltic sea... Then again, never misunderestimate the stupidity of the common man and the opportunism in politicians...

Fukushima may be a contributing factor to public opinion, but it's not the reason Germany is going non-nuclear. That direction was taken over a decade ago.

 

[SharlinMinto]

Well, I was wondering.

Some explanation:

"Ceramic cup, hand wash" is the least environmentally friendly choice. Simply because a ceramic cup takes about 70 times the energy to produce than a styrofoam one, washing one with a 3/4 loaded dishwasher takes about the same amount of energy, water and chemicals, and that dishwasher takes about half the energy, a sixth of the water and less soap than doing it by hand.

"Paper cup, recycle it" is quite bad as well, because paper takes a lot of energy and chemicals, the cups aren't made of recycled paper due to contamination concerns, and if you throw some in with the paper to be recycled, it adds plastic to it and makes that batch unusable.

"Styrofoam cup, throw it away" is by far the most environmentally sound choice. The only thing you can say against it, is that it biodegrades slower than a paper one, although it falls apart faster.

And a plastic, single-use bottle beats a glass one easily as well.

Well those were really eye opening reasons, never thought about the energy consumed while manufacturing the cup I am using.... well on the other side I am using recycled products like picket fence made up of recycled plastic so will now use recycled cups also!!

 

[Arwin]

On another note: Germany, which gets 20% of it's energy from nuclear plants, is going to dismantle them all right away and switch to green energy like solar and wind to fill the gap. Mostly by encouraging people to do it themselves.

The politicians involved are sure that solar and wind can easily fill the gap. They probably didn't research the land area required to make that happen.

Pretty inefficient and environmentally UNfriendly, if you ask me. But it scores large heaps of votes.

The storage of nuclear waste is a hot item in Germany, and is becoming one in many other areas as not only nuclear plants can only store so much of that on-site, but Fukushima has shown that storage on-site also comes with additional risks. And in Japan, they're now struggling with what to do with all the nuclear waste, as the incident has created a lot more of it.

The creation of energy of nuclear power plants may seem to be environmentally friendly, but the long-term waste issues are of a different order. If everything is taken into account, nuclear power isn't as cheap as people have projected.

And yes, I do think solar and wind can fill the gap in Germany, but of course it will take time.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well those were really eye opening reasons, never thought about the energy consumed while manufacturing the cup I am using.... well on the other side I am using recycled products like picket fence made up of recycled plastic so will now use recycled cups also!!

Just remember that recycled plastic products are a bit of a wash when it comes to environmental impact. Sure you get a bit less going into landfills but it's also anywhere from 30-50% more energy, chemicals, and materials to recycle plastic into another useable form than it is just to make a new plastic version of that item. So those plastic fences saved a bit of landfill space which in a small country isn't an insignificant concern, but at the expense of significantly higher energy and assorted other costs to the environment.

It's the main reason why recycling of plastic costs local government's significant taxpayer dollars while recycling of aluminum brings a small profit. Certain paper products on the other hand are a bit of a wash.

It's too bad we can't just dump all our waste directly into the core of the planet. That's the ultimate recycler.

Regards,
SB

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I use ceramic cups, probably thousands of times before they get replaced or broken. I have a dishwasher that uses about 7.3 pence of energy to wash 14 place settings with 10 litres of water. There's probably a few more pence of dishwasher detergent/salt/rinser, but it uses much less of everything than washing by hand, and I never run it until it's full.

 

[Sonic]

Ceramic and dishwasher here. I may have had another answer before, but looking at the big picture it is definitely ceramic and dishwasher. At home I will usually wash dishes by hand with my son, just so he can get in the habit of it.

In the workplace it varies, but regular cups and glasses go in the dishwashers along with ceramic plates. Any type of fine glass, especially wine glasses and very nice beer glasses will always get washed by hand, no matter what. I actually have that as part of a few reg worker's day to day routine.

 

[SharlinMinto]

Just remember that recycled plastic products are a bit of a wash when it comes to environmental impact. Sure you get a bit less going into landfills but it's also anywhere from 30-50% more energy, chemicals, and materials to recycle plastic into another useable form than it is just to make a new plastic version of that item. So those plastic fences saved a bit of landfill space which in a small country isn't an insignificant concern, but at the expense of significantly higher energy and assorted other costs to the environment.

It's the main reason why recycling of plastic costs local government's significant taxpayer dollars while recycling of aluminum brings a small profit. Certain paper products on the other hand are a bit of a wash.

It's too bad we can't just dump all our waste directly into the core of the planet. That's the ultimate recycler.

Regards,
SB

I agree,:smile: its still quite costlier to recycle plastic specially small countries, but at-least bigger countries can opt it instead of dumping plastic as we know we totally can't stop the usage of plastic . I have heard about companies manufacturing recycled products having patch up with other companies producing plastic as a scrap or waste material..... Still researching for minimizing the cost of recycling.....

 

[Fred]

The best answer is that the energy difference between using the 3 different methods is essentially nil. Safely negligable relative to the scientific uncertainty in the worlds energy requirements. For the most part, there is very few things you can actually do environmentally as an individual that actually makes much of a difference for the large scale problem (with the exception of not having children)

Its a little bit like voting in a sense. People can pretend like it makes a difference, but it really doesn't.
.

 

[KimB]

(with the exception of not having children)

I don't see how this can reasonably be an exception. Population growth simply isn't much of an issue in any location where people actually have the choice of whether or not to have kids.

Its a little bit like voting in a sense. People can pretend like it makes a difference, but it really doesn't.
.

While one individual person's contribution is obviously small, when people group together the effect can be quite large, whether talking about voting or environmental issues.

 

[Fred]

Eh? That makes no sense at all. Having children is an exponential contribution to carbon and really does become important. Their children contribute, and their childrens children and so forth. Further each generation that comes afterwards, will need that much more energy and carbon output than their parents did. And on it goes. Further, its precisely in affluent places where having children produces the worse results, as a typical westerners energy consumption is far greater than what you would have in the third world.

Since the carbon problem we have is something that will last on the order of centuries, children really do matter.

However the difference in EROI between using a styrofoam cup vs a glass is just tiny, and even if say the entire US population was to switch, you are looking at savings over a few centuries that is probably on the same order as a single person not having a kid today.