One Small Change
Recognizing the environmental impact of your daily routine.
In all honesty, I should have named this blog Whales, Trails, and Coffee- but it just doesn’t have that nice ring to it. I owe everything to coffee. Seriously though, a huge part of my journey began with coffee. Since I can remember, I have brewed a pot of coffee each morning and enjoyed the first cup in the comfort of my own home. But after work, I created the habit of stopping at Dunkin’ Donuts for an inconsistent iced coffee around four times a week.
Sure, the inconsistency in taste was frustrating, but I knew there were much bigger problems behind my habit. The plastic straw, the plastic cup, the plastic lid, and let’s not forget, the Styrofoam cup that I’d receive whether I liked it or not.
Plastic problems, for real.
1 straw + 1 cup + 1 lid = 3 plastic pieces that do not decompose. Multiply the 3 plastic pieces by 4 for each afternoon stop, and congratulations, you’ve now contributed 12 pieces of plastic to the environment in a single week. I started to imagine what all my plastic pieces would look like if I just kept them in our backyard for a year. Well, if there are 52 weeks in a year than we would have a pile of 624 Dunkin’ Donuts logo adorned plastic pieces in the yard.
Yikes.
But they disappear, right? The recycling company comes and takes them away where they go on to be reincarnated into other glorious plastic pieces. Wrong. In 2018, China pretty much stopped taking our imported recyclables. Call me pessimistic, but there’s a likely chance all our plastic waste is now choking up local landfills. Possibly incinerated? Ahh, fresh air. Either way, our obsession with single-use plastic is problematic.
When I first started thinking in depth about my dilemma, the easiest thing for me to cut out was the plastic straws and to physically go into Dunkin’ Donuts so when I placed my order, I could let them know a “hot cup” was not needed. And so, my journey began. I replaced my weekly single-use straws with a shiny stainless-steel straw, ditched the Styrofoam, and patted myself on the back. But something was glaring; a reusable straw inserted into a single-use plastic cup? What a hypocrite.
That was it. It was time to break my afternoon Dunkin’ Donuts habit. Each morning, I started brewing extra coffee in our ever-so-faithful Mr. Coffee. We’d take a mug to work and put the extra coffee into a pitcher in the fridge for later. Boom, house made iced coffee; always consistent, always fresh, and always ethically sourced- just add ice.
Let’s go back to the ethically sourced part. In addition to guaranteeing consistency, brewing coffee at home allows you to make other impactful decisions. For example, you can choose a local coffee company that prioritizes sustainable growing process and fair treatment of laborers and and feel good about supporting your local economy. Nice!
I have also saved a lot of money by quitting my Dunkin’ Donuts habit. At nearly $3 an iced coffee, 4 times a week, for 52 weeks, I have saved approximately $624 each year. That’s also the same number of plastic pieces I’ve spared the environment. Win, win.
Listen guys, this entry is not to discredit Dunkin’. It’s not exactly fair that I used them as an example when so many other things in my life involve single-use plastic. It’s a work in progress. Dunkin’ is a major corporation that has been moving forward with sustainability processes that are truly admirable. But we need these massive companies to help us with our plastic problem! That’s a story for another day.
The moral of this story is that one small change can have a major impact. So, what is one thing you could do each day that would result in great changes?
Comment below and let me know what changes you’ve made in your life that have had a positive impact!
