Did you know that more than one million single-use paper coffee cups are disposed of in Toronto every day? To many people, buying a cup of coffee is an everyday routine. In many municipalities including Toronto, the plastic-lined paper cups are not recyclable and so they end up in landfill. For Sheridan, the coffee cups accounted for 3 percent of the total waste, according to the waste audit conducted for the Cafeteria and B Wing a year ago. The cups are relatively light but they take up a lot of space. You can often see coffee cups in different waste bins. The college paid $143,910 to our waste collector for hauling our garbage to a landfill site 230 km away. With the Zero Waste program just rolled out at Sheridan’s Trafalgar campus (and will be available at the other campuses later this year), the coffee cups are now collected in the Green Organic Bins in the ZW program. These waste cups therefore become part of the “organics” waste and are being collected and transported to a facility, Harvest Power Plant, in London where the material is converted into electricity and put into the grid.
So when we pay for $1.60 for a cup of tea at Tim Horton, it does not include the cost of the waste disposal to Sheridan. It also does not include the carbon dioxide emitted by the garbage truck. When coffee cups end up in landfill, it contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and can potentially cause contamination to underground water. As well, the energy and resources used for making the paper cups are not included.
So how can each member of the Sheridan community help? A green option is to bring our own mug. Not only can this simple action benefit the environment, but collectively we can help Sheridan significantly reduce its waste disposal cost. On a personal level, you can save 30 cents for a medium size of coffee. If you have to buy and throw away a single-use coffee cup, please make sure to put the cup into the Organics (Green) Bin. Remember to separate the plastic lid from the cup. The lid should go into the Mixed Recycling (Blue) Bin. The cup sleeve should also go to the Mixed Recycling Bin as well.
Hope you can join the Zero Waste initiative at Sheridan. Everyone can make a difference!