The Problem

Love 'em and leave 'em
Do you jump from java to java, leaving a trail of abandoned cups behind? Coffee cups have short lives — most folks hang onto them for no more than five minutes. Approximately 4,000 cups and plastic lids are bought, sipped and tossed at a single Santa Monica coffee joint each week. It starts to add up.....

Here today, still here tomorrow.
Plastic waste never dies, it simply floats away. About 80 percent of marine litter comes through our storm drains, and the stuff never completely disappears, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. Thousands of sea turtles and marine mammals, and millions of sea birds and fish die each year from entanglement and ingestion of marine litter, mostly plastic.

Plastic for breakfast?
Numerous studies suggest plastic leaches toxic chemicals into our food and water. Some plastics contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals linked to developmental and reproductive problems in wildlife and humans. Little is known about exactly how this is impacting our ecosystem and our health.

It's the economy, stupid
As landfill space grows more and more scarce, garbage costs are going to keep going up. Restaurants that use disposables are on a path to huge garbage bills. The state of California spends $72 million a year collecting and burying dispoable cups and bags. Those prices will keep going up. A Starbucks waste audit found that its 13.5 million commuter-mug-toting customers kept an estimated 586,800 pounds of paper from landfills in 2003. Now that's no joke.