Devolution of a Dispable Cup

As I've been hiking through the forests and parks, I've started noticing garbage on the ground. And picking it up to carry it out to a garbage can. It's obvious that some of the garbage has been there for a while... And with a bit of sleuthing, I have created a photo timeline of "Devolution of a Disposable Cup". A Tim Horton's cup. It's not that I have a bone to pick with Tim Hortons... it's just that those are the cups that I see lying on the ground in parks and forests...

Here's what happens to a disposable cup over time in the forest...

Stage 1

First, a pristine Tim Hortons cup, with or without plastic lid, gets tossed on the ground somewhere. Perhaps the person who tossed it things that it is made from paper and that it will decompose. Not sure what they thought about the lid... The thing is... the inside of the cup is lined with a thin film of plastic...

Stage 2

Here we have a cup after at least one winter, as evidenced by the cones and needles on the cup. There is also new growth over top of the cup, so it has lain outside since at least last fall - let's say 9 months. You can still see the reddish colouring which makes me think it's a Tim Hortons cup...

Stage 3

We then move to this stage - all the colouring is gone. It could be a Tim Hortons cup or... a McDonald's cup or... Starbucks. I'm going to guess at least a year out in the woods.

Stage 4

We now come to this one... most of the outer paper coating is gone, leaving us with a rather odd shaped sleeve. How long did it take to get to this point? A year and a half? Two years?

Stage 5

Until we reach this stage... pure, clean, unadulterated plastic sleeve. When I first found this in the bush, I was a bit perplexed as to what it could be but... then... I picked it up and...

See... it's the bottom of a cup... it's the interior plastic film from a disposable cup...

It is quite sturdy and it took a bit to tear it... but there you have it... plastic sleeve from a disposable cup. How long has that been in the woods? Two years? Three years? How much longer would it have lasted? Decades.

I should also mention, that I have picked up disposable cups somewhere between Stage 1 and Stage 2 and found gnaw marks on them, with chunks missing from the rim. Obviously, some little squirrel or mouse or vole or other critter, liked the taste of milk or sugar or whatever was in the cup and decided to snack on it. Which means that little critter ingested plastic. I wonder how well that went through its intestinal system? Or if it caused a blockage and the little critter died in agony...

Let's be clear. Disposable does not mean Compostable. If it did... it would say that. Really, the word "disposable" is a misnomer... a better choice might be "trashable"...

It might make us aware of the utter insanity of what we are doing. Tim Hortons produces 2 billion trashable cups every single year. That's 2,000,000,000... and let's be clear. They are NOT recyclable. They are NOT compostable. They are lined with plastic. Plastic never goes away... it just takes hundreds of years to degrade into smaller and smaller pieces... which will eventually find their way into streams, lakes, rivers and oceans. Where they will be ingested by phytoplankton and krill and migrate up the food chain... with all the toxins that accompany a petrochemical product... Where we will eventually ingest them in our salmon or tuna... And we wonder why cancer rates are increasing. Please, please... if you love the squirrels... and the birds... and the salmon and oceans and lakes and rivers and forests... and your children or your grandchildren... Just say NO to Trashable cups.