On the subject of using a reusable coffee cup rather than a paper throw-away, the lady at the cafe in my building at work was saying that there were a lot of complaints when they had to change from cups to paper. She felt that in addition to the waste, people got a better experience from drinking out of a proper cup.

That's great! You definitely have nothing to lose – hope they make the change! Let me know how it turns out.

Thanks for your comment. I think that some people can't be bothered, but I also think a lot of people just aren't really aware of the level of damage they are indirectly responsible for by doing routine every day things and how easy it is to change a lot of that. I wouldn't describe myself as an eco saint at all and I guess that was what this post was getting at. It's ok to not be perfect because you are right – even if everyone slightly gave a sh*t we would be in a much better place than we are now!

My employer who supposedly has an environmental vibe going on provides each of our little kitchens with hundreds if not thousands of the bloody things. I see people just go in, fill one up with two mouthfuls of water, swig it then bin the cup. If that's not a waste of resources and company money then I don't know what is. When did people forget how to wash up a glass or carry a reusable bottle around?

I've been meaning to but this has pushed me over the edge, I'm emailing the environment department tomorrow suggesting they seriously cut or stop usage of the disposable cups!

Thanks for the nudge 🙂

Great post and good to hear your thoughts on such subjects.

The people that say what's the point are just rationalising the fact that they can't be bothered. I'd prefer if they were just honest with us and said sorry I just don't care!

Obviously it is easy to look hypocritical when advocating conservation of resources because everyone needs to use SOME resources to live so unless you are monk living on dust and water then some smart arse somewhere is going to point out that who are you to tell me to cut down on X when you are still using Y. It's a totally fallacious argument and if everyone followed their logic the earth would already be completely trashed and humans wiped out. There have been many civilisations ruined before ours due to resource constraints and with our 7 billion and still growing it is ludicrous to think we aren't going to hit the same barriers.

You are an eco saint compared to the TFS household but I would say we produce far less trash than your average UK home, simply by slightly giving a shit about the whole thing. If everyone did that we'd be in a much better place and then once you are moving in that direction I think things will snowball.

I remain apprehensively optimistic for the future 🙂

Thanks for your lovely comment! I agree with you about cutting down on meat – we eat a lot less meat now than we used to! I have thought about buying recycled toilet paper, but I got put off by the possibility of it containing BPA. It does look like ecoleaf is one of the better brands though http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/buyersguides/householdconsumables/toiletpaper.aspx Good luck with the sugar-free challenge. I was really strict for about 2 years with that but then had some dark chocolate and now I do occasionally eat some things I probably shouldn't. Most of the time I still try to avoid it though.