In the News - Tim Hortons & Burger King jump on eco-bandwagon

Well... on top of the Tim Horton's eliminating double-cupping... they are now jumping on another eco-bandwagon.

The company signed a deal last month with TerraCycle Loop to try out reusable cups and containers with deposits.

Customers buy their Timmies double-double, pay a small deposit, get their coffee in a reusable cup, which they can later return for a refund.

The cups and containers will then be professionally cleaned by TerraCycle and sent back out for reuse. And it's not just Timmies, Burger King has jumped on the bandwagon as well.

It's an admirable move... trying to reduce the amount of single-use plastics and single-use disposable packaging. I can't tell you how many Timmies cups I've found lying on the ground in local parks, often with a garbage can mere meters away. And let's not mention the number of cans and bottles (all with refundable deposits) that also clutter up local parks and roadways.

Sooo... if people still toss cans and bottles (which have deposits)... why do we think Timmies coffee drinkers will be any different? Or maybe it's just an incentive for litter-picker-uppers... one more thing that can be returned for a deposit and cold hard cash.

I'm a bit skeptical about this Timmies venture. Far better to encourage people to bring their own reusable cups (if Covid-19 ever loosens its grip on us) and or tiffin containers - be it a tiffin tin or just a rubbermaid container with a lid.

It remains to be seen how this will play out. I saw another headline go by, while researching TerraCycle, which noted that Loblaws had partnered with them in February 2019 in certain parts of the country (Toronto of course). The idea being that customers could return empty PC product containers (in a new durable, reusable format) via Loop. I haven't been able to find any recent news articles about the success/failure of this project... perhaps derailed by Covid-19.

What do you think... a success or not?

Déjà vu - Your Double Double will no longer be served in a Double Cup

Good news!! Finally... after many years... Tim Horton's is letting go of double-cupping every customer's double-double. It really seemed like an insane practice... Twice the litter. Twice the plastic cup liners. Twice the cost. Twice the everything.

But no longer... Timmies has decided to go the way of almost every other take-out coffee provider and use cardboard sleeves to protect the hands of Canadians. Smart, right? Less plastic, less waste, less everything. Except... you're not alone if you're getting a sense of deja-vu. We've been here before... seven years ago to be exact.

Apparently, Tim Horton's flirted with cardboard sleeves in the past... in 2013 to be precise...at least in Winnipeg. What happened to the cardboard sleeves? Did they not take off? Was it too much trouble? Oh, and it wasn't just Winnipeg... I found this article which talked about McMaster's University in Ontario... I've sent a Facebook Message to Tim Hortons headquarters asking what happened to the first double-cupping switcheroo... and what makes this switcheroo different. We'll see if/with what they respond.

Tim Horton's cardboard sleeves - 2013
From Inside Timmies site

It's kind of crazy when you think about it. All this foo-fa-rah about abandoning double cupping in favour of cardboard sleeves... annnnddd... it's all been done before. Sigh.

On the other hand, at least they've gotten rid of the practice of handing out disposable Roll-up-the-Rim cups with your porcelain mug of coffee when you eat-in. That was also kind of crazy. 

Of course, the best thing to do is bring your own reusable coffee cup but... in the age of covid-19, that is frowned upon and a bit hard to do in a drive-thru. Ah well... Maybe this version of cardboard sleeve will stick around at Timmies...

 

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.