Midterms and growing piles of coffee cups

After only 4 weeks of school midterms are upon us (a downside to the quarter system). This means that students at Santa Clara are staying up later, multitasking, stressing and consuming way too much caffeine. (even as I write this I’m trying to update my tumblr and twitter, write a short paper, and plan the rest of my week so I can get everything done). 


In the beginning of the quarter only a few people would bring coffee to class, but as the quarter marched on the number of paper cups and plastics lids in all of my classes has risen dramatically. Although the coffee itself has a major environmental impact, the single use cups and lids alone are shocking. Trash cans and compost bins around campus are full of the cups. The estimates of paper coffee cups we use per day is well into the millions. According to Chris Jordan it’s over 40 million per day. 

Even though we are all rushing, we need to remember that there is always time to grab our to-go mug, and wash it afterwards (an added bonus is that your coffee/ other caffeine filled drink will stay warmer and test better longer). Just because we are stressed doesn’t mean we need to stress the environment.