I'm curious what percentage of non-biodegradable waste is from cups and straws. I suspect there are much bigger fish to fry. It would be a bit more work and coordination but it seems that a standard set of 30-50 different metal/ceramic containers could serve most packaging purposes at grocery stores. If marketing/branding is an issue, some soy or other non-toxic ink could be used to print labels and decoration on the packaging with each re-use.
Generally in Australia, environmental initiatives are welcomed. We have sorted waste bins, banned plastic bags, banned single use straws, and recently coffee cups have been a source of attention. I don't have any figures, but every person I work with has a reusable coffee cup. Keep Cups [1] are a very popular option. Unfortunately a portion of the population resist any sort of change, which is rather natural I guess. Change is hard and the youth in this country are typically setting a good example.
A documentary called The War On Waste [2] had a very convincing show on Coffee Cups. This has had a decent impact on the population from my perspective.
The mindset change is probably worth while if this thread is anything to go by. I was rather surprised that there are so many negative comments in this thread. There has been an obvious and substantial shift towards being mindful of your impact on the environment in Australia which is very welcoming.
This scene from Mad Men (57sec) [3] shows how previous habits are no longer acceptable behaviour.
What I worry about is that politicians will prefer low-impact high-visibility policies over high-impact low-visibility policies. Which for some reason, sometimes they do.
For example, Californian politicians introduced a ban on restaurants providing tap water without being asked.... while subsidising irrigation water for farmers that uses several orders of magnitude more water.
I don't know why they'd do that - maybe ignorance, receiving bad advice, cynical political posturing, corruption, or something else - but it's frustrating to see the political energy to solve a real problem being wasted on things that won't solve the problem.
