| |
| I don't know about you but I like to have a cup of coffee in the morning and another after lunch.
I like it with a bit of sugar, so naturally I use a wooden stir stick, which is what you normally have in your average coffee shop.
Sometimes it may happen that I would grab more stir sticks than needed - “just in case”. A few days ago I had an insight. As I was playing with my stir stick
I notice that it is quite strong, which means that they use high quality timber to make them, i.e. slow growing trees. The next thing
that I realized was that the depth of the stir sticks is approximately the same as that of a matchstick and its total size is that of about
25 safety matchsticks. My next thought shocked me - for the two cups of coffee I have every day I use as much timber as if I burn a whole
safety match with its 50 sticks in it.
|
 |
|
 |
I could not find information about the worlds production of wooden stir sticks, but based on the data for
production of safety matches and some elementary mathematics, I could deduce that the numbers are staggering. The world produces and uses so
many safety matches every second that a big highest quality timber tree is burned every five seconds. Of
course no one notices it, as it burns on many places at the same time. The problem with the wooden stir sticks is that one uses the same amount of timber as
if they burn a whole match every day by just drinking two cups of coffee if they use wooden stir sticks. On the other hand using up a whole safety match per day
is a very improbable thing. |
|
| What is the alternative? Well, one alternative is to carry your own spoon, which I think is very considerate.
To carry around a fork might be a dangerous idea these days... you never know what new law may have been put in place... But I think to have a small coffee/tea
spoon in your pocket is still safe... Nevertheless I personally chose to start using plastic straws instead wooden stir sticks or carry around a spoon. As it
turns using a plastic straw to drink coffee can also help to protect your teeth and keep them white. It is you to decide for yourself what would you do, I only
want to make the point that a wooden stir stick has a very high price that the already few left forests pay.
|
|
| |
|