Monday, March 22, 2010

Starbucks coffee cups

The current Starbucks cup design drives me a little crazy.  It reads.
"YOU.  HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL FOR 10 YEARS".
 The text goes on to say nothing about trees/paper/pulp, but talks about making things better for farmers?!?  I don't get the connection of how focusing on climate change with farmers will encourage people not to waste cups, or how that will save a rain forest, or trees.

This is such a ridiculous marketing scheme.  As someone who is at least aware of conservation, I would paraphrase this as saying, "LAZY.  You are too lazy to bring in your cup, so you are getting a paper one.  Its OK, because we know that cups are wasteful to the environment, but we don't want you not to spend money because you forgot your cup.  Go ahead and feel good about your coffee because we say that we try to balance your use of cups by working with the farmers to reduce CO2 in other ways, although we are not going to tell you how."

Yeah, I should not use paper cups.  Don't make me try to believe its a good thing.  Just let it nag on my mind, so maybe I'll actually NOT use paper cups.