Not sanitary at all.
BYOC! Bring your own cup!
If you have to bring your own shopping bags and grocery bags, you should have to bring your own cup to Starbucks.
Oh, wait, they don’t want all those germs crawling off personal cups? Those same germs and more crawl out of nasty grocery bags.
Goodbye Little Red Solo Cup!.........................
Plastics in the food chain are a HUGE problem, and like Cigarettes it will probably be another few decades before the powers that be begin to admit the reality of the problem.
I have no doubt in my mind that the majority of endocrine disorders we are dealing with today are a direct result of plastics in the food chain.
Burn them, problem solved. You’re welcome!
Guess we’ll all have to drink out of tin cups as in olden times. Environmentalists are not suited for modern day living.
I’m sure the global elites pushing this are going to abide by these decrees too, right?
Not sanitary at all.
Bags, straws and cups. Think they will stop at that? I know that the presence of large masses of plastic waste in the oceans is an environmental disaster, but this won’t solve it. The problem is irresponsible idiots who throw the plastic into the environment, where it goes in the storm drains, into rivers, and into the ocean.
Pick up the damn things!
Since when do paper cups have to have plastic linings?
I think wax (as in waxed paper) which is biodegradable works. How did the “old” paper cups keep the liquids in? Actually, they would eventually become soggy but long after you finished the drink.
When will they ban disposable diapers?
But more importantly, if sent through a "trash to energy" plant, in which waste carbon-based trash is burned in incinerators to produce electrical power (much like the coal or natural gas fired generation plants), this waste stream simply releases back to the atmosphere was may have only recently been taken out in the cultivation of trees harvested to produce paper.
If the environmental movement is SERIOUS about clean energy, they would promote a technology called "Plasma arc trash reduction", a process by which ALL forms of trash are reduced to their constituent atomic structure, then the heat generated by this process is used to drive electric power generation. The primary products of this process are "syngas", a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, both of which are excellent fuels that may be used to drive the generation of electric power, and a silica slag which contains practically all other components of whatever went into the trash stream.
The volume of the slag that comes off is about a quarter to a tenth of the volume of the original trash, and it may be mined for various metallic content, as it is a higher grade of ore than is most of the material that is hauled up out of the ground by various mining operations all over the world. It may be hot-formed into building blocks, and depending on how it is cooled (rapid quench or slow radiant cooling), it forms various grades of igneous stone. Or it may be crushed as aggregate for concrete or for road building purposes.
Once up and running, the operating temperature of the plasma torch is about 33,000 ˚ F., about three times the temperature of the sun's surface. The syngas generated is about 2,200˚ F., and is passed over a heat exchanger to generate superheated steam, in the process of cooling it. Once cooled, the stream of hydrogen and carbon monoxide may be separated, yielding up pure hydrogen which may be used to power a fuel cell, or burned directly in the presence of oxygen to yield a very hot flame, which may be used to further produce power through the medium of superheated steam. Carbon monoxide itself is an excellent fuel which when combined with oxygen, forms carbon dioxide, a safe, NON-POLLUTING fraction of our atmosphere, and one that is vital for the photosynthesis of oxygen and carbohydrates in green growing plants. The carbon dioxide may also be captured, cooled and compressed into either liquid CO2, or allowed to become "dry ice", an intensely cold and solid form of CO2, and an important industrial product.
The hydrogen, of course, when combined with oxygen, becomes water vapor.
Empty out our land fills and turn those blighted acres back into "greenfields", divert all the existing and continuing waste stream into electric power, reduce need for and dependence on fossil fuels, assure a continuous supply of building materials that will prove to be the equal of our current supplies, and provide a way of reclaiming metallic elements otherwise lost when merely dumped in a hole in the ground. And not only the land fills, the sewage sludge that is now dumped there could go through this plasma arc, with the decomposed fecal matter adding its bit to the "syngas", and simultaneously extracting all the dreaded metals like cadmium and mercury from circulation in the soil and groundwater.
I don't see a downside. Most elegant solution.
It has been estimated that perhaps fewer than a dozen of these processing units could both clean up all the existing waste dumps, and the current waste stream, for a municipality the size of New York City, and generate enough electricity to keep it lit and industry-capable, without tapping into outside sources.
There is a place to spend the funds for infrastructure that does NOT have to be only for the roads and bridges. This is infrastructure that actually IMPROVES our environment. And generates a number of useful by-products, not the least of which is relatively cheap electric power.
And carbon-neutral to boot. NO fossil fuels are used once the cycle is started.
Can't get greener than that.
Circle K has replaced the Valero Corner Store paper cups, which were double-walled and worked beautifully without corrugated sleeves, with flimsy foam cups. One of those new cups collapsed in my hand, spilling scalding coffee all over my forearm, about 2 weeks ago. The new cups are crap. They’ve brought the old ones back, but “only until we use them up”, according to the Circle K employee I spoke with.
Valero, I sure wish you hadn’t sold off the Corner Store division...
When they came for the straws, I said nothing because I wasn’t a straw ...