Eco-cups

At work I drink a lot of coffee.  All too often, the coffee leaks over my hand within about 5 minutes of having poured it.  Here is a picture of the cups we use at work, they are “ecotainers”.  This one leaked in 5 minutes, drip-drip-drip onto the floor and my hand.

I think the whole ‘green’ movement started with companies that were in financial trouble.  Imagine this boardroom conversation at Ecotainer Headquarters:

“Frank, we have two problems.  First, people keep reusing the same cup.  We met some teachers in Indiana that used the same cup for over a month!  And, the Chinese are making cheaper cups than we can!”

“Bob, I think we need a less durable cup.”

“That’s genius!  But how can we do that?”

“What if we remove the wax seal?”

“Hmm, the wax seal is about half of our manufacturing costs, so that sounds pretty good.   But it will probably leak leak.”

“No, they’ll just have to drink their coffee faster.  It will hold long enough for one cup of coffee.  It would be recyclable too.  Now we could label it environmentally friendly!”

“Environmentally friendly products usually get a 10-20% price premium too.”

“I can’t wait to get this to market!  Maybe we should open up a carpet cleaning side business?”

Update:
I’m not alone.
The Practical Environmentalist got so excited about the word “environment”, that he forgot to test the product he wrote about.  But 2 out of his 3 commentors agree – the cups leak!

I think I’ll go make cars with no engines.  Since they don’t have engines, I’ll be able to label them as environmentally friendly.  “Practical Environmentalists” everywhere will buy them up for their zero emissions; forgetting to read about the zero performance!

I wonder if this post is as silly as Ben’s whining about potato chips.