Gregg saw this cheerful environmentally-friendly message on the side of his Sam’s Club soda cup. Wait, what? We guess it saves Sam’s Club fuel costs to ship the cups, but that sounds more like a profit-friendly quality. Gregg notes another benefit of the cup: “[it] may never biodegrade but at least it’s easy on my drinkin’ elbow.”
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@joemono: Yeah. Their big pitch is that they carbon offset shipping plain ol’ water halfway around the world 120%. Excuse me, but I’ll just use tap water and a filter and use the money I save to lead a greener life so I pollute less in the first place.
Consumerist needs a greenwashing tag.
@stacye: They do.
[consumerist.com]
So, what would happen if companies started charging $.10 more for a cup, but lowered the price of the actual drink by a nickel? I mean, isn’t the cup the most expensive part of the deal? The rest in most drinks is some cheap syrup (About 7 cents for a 32 oz drink), some municipal water, and carbonating (also cheap). Seems to me they’d save a bunch, get an excuse to charge people more, and encourage people to use their own cups, earning them (both the company and customers) green credentials. I guess they would lose the free advertising, but if they sold the reusable cups (including the small sizes, not just the massive ones) at a cheap enough price, you’d have customers still using cups with your logo.
@Wormfather is Wormfather: sorry, i guess i just thought the joke was a little to off color. most of the producers you speak of are, after all, poor. anyway, hope you have a boat!
Does anybody actually know whether or not Sam’s Club has been taking efforts to “Greenify” their cups, or are we just assuming that because there’s a random fact on the side of the cup that *could* make it more green but might not, that they’re trying to melt the sun and club baby seals?
I’d also kill for Pepsi and Coke to design a container that you could refill at a fountain at the supermarket which would keep its fizz. The reason I’m off soda, aside from health bennies, is because I don’t like you have to buy it in a bottle or can, when I have 99% of the constitutes of soda sitting in a pipe right next to me. I guess they could have it work like you put a capless bottle under a hose, it fills it with flat soda (syrup and water, mixed inside the machine), and then pumps in CO2 and slaps on a cap like they do at the factory. Technology is probably at the point we could make a bottling plant the size of a CoinStar machine. It could even slap a cute little label on the side of the bottle.
Plus, it’d help keep around sodas with cult followings, like Surge, since it wouldn’t steal shelf space from more popular brands. It’d be nice to have natural offerings, too, like Kosher/Mexican Coke and Pepsi RAW (a British version made with cane syrup and no artificial flavors).
@MichaelBrazell: Knowing WalMart, a design jockey probably suggested it, and they figured they may throw in a pseudo-green fact for near-free. Probably done in the same vein as, “Oh, you do one stop shopping at WalMart, so that way it’s green! Also, we’re apparently the only store that carries concentrated soap!”
These ideas are technically green, but not intentionally. Since WalMart doesn’t seem to embrace local produce like some supermarkets in my area, or offer farmers’ market days, I kinda doubt they save a net of more fuel. However, they do save the end user gas, so I guess that does mean it’s cheaper if not greener.
@Quilt: Is your buddy’s name quilt by any chance? I know, I know, you can cry, let it out.
Sorry, couldnt resist.
Sam’s is betting that their customers are this stupid.
FWIW, Walmart does not have foam or paper cups in its break rooms anymore. The “associates” have to bring their reusable cups from home.
He who gets the last laugh wins……
Look at the free publicity they are getting over this.
@joemono:
I remember seeing once at Henry’s (“natural” food store) a display of bottled water… fronm FINLAND! How and why is water from Finland worth the high cost of shipping it? I never got a satisfactory answer from them. I’ve got the picture around somewhere…
How am I supposed to work out my arms if my soda cups weigh 60% less?
@TVarmy:
Supposedly Procter & Gamble spent several hundred million dollars on a secret project to create a carbonated drink that would have been a powder sprayed into a cup at the factory & then you would just add water to it. Sort of like the old Fizzies tablets from the early 60s. They apparently gave up when they went out & bought the Orange Crush Co. The rumor was that since everyone’s water is different, they couldn’t get it to taste the same everywhere.
I like my coffee hot and to remain hot during my drive into work! Polystyrene does a much better job of that–paper cups suck!
@evan: Nonesense.
Look at a paper cup and a styrofoam cup of the same capacity.
The styrofoam cup is thicker, and takes up more space, you cannot
fit as many in a stack. Meaning that more stacks are required, meaning
that more cups are required.
I love these cups. I pour my bottled beer into them, and it reduces the strain of drinking. And ladies, there’s nothing more unsightly than rippling beer biceps, so maybe you want to pick up a gross of these amazing featherweight cups.
the difference is what, 3 grams? yay for the earth!
NOT
Meh, it’s walmart. I shop there cause there’s no where else open after midnight. During the day I shop anywhere else.
If I get a foam cup from somewhere like that I’ll be refilling it with water or tea (which is what it originally contained in my case.) all day.
@jcromartie: Actually…I’m fairly certain your gas mileage IS affected by how much weight is in your car.
I remember when I first bought one of those cups about a month ago. I thought it was weird it wasn’t paper, then I looked at it and saw the message. Thanks Walmart, I’m killing penguins because you think my body can’t fully support the weight of a paper cup filled with liquid. I’m glad you care about my well being so much, but I think I can manage to hold a few ounces more if it keeps our environment alive.
@Bladefist: You’re so right. “Green” is the next Atkins-friendly, chipotle, ciabatta. Dunno why I instantly remember all of the food-related ones (breakfast time, maybe?). For most companies, green is disco; it’s primarily a fad. Not saying some sensible environmentally-friendly things won’t come out of it, but you’ll get a lot of crap like this Sams cup, which is the Disco Duck of green.
Man, it just hit me. The cup is only claiming to weigh less. But they used a green font. Pretty sneaky, sis.
“As George Carlin (RIP) once said. “The planet isnt going anywhere…we are” So I’m not saving the planet.”
I think ‘SAVE THE PLANET’ is a poor choice of phrases. This is really about self preservation. We’re not going to destroy the Earth, but we may just destroy our descendant’s ability to survive on it.
Ultimately, all “green” decisions made by businesses are PR decisions. And there really isn’t anything wrong with that. It all comes down to money. That’s just how business decisions are made.
But we really shouldn’t depend on big business to save us from “destroying the planet” (quotes for irony). Big business will be happy to sell us all the hybrid cars and CFL lightbulbs and biodegradable diapers we can afford, but for real change we will have to rethink they way we live. More people will need to live closer to where they work and shop (like within biking or walking distance). The days are rapidly drawing to an end where we can afford to have everyone driving 30 miles a day to get to and from work and then go the Target store and then Blockbuster and then the megamarket and then the toy store and then to the dry cleaner and so forth and so on. We need a return to neighborhoods like the ones we had before WWII, instead of our current paradigm which allows for 100 square acres of “Pleasant Valley Sunday” ‘burbs twenty miloes away from 500 square acres of shopping bliss with 2 Wal-marts in every shopping mega-complex.
/rant over
@Nyses: Right on, I get so sick of these companies “greenwashing” themselves……and then people actually believe it. And seriously, how could anything associated with walmart (and China) be good for the environment? Seriously??
@Hongfiately: my favorite greenwashing campaign was Barneys “Green”. Selling “green” clothing to the most virulent of consumers. It’s all just PR bull. No wBarnys gets to brag about being green to the housewives of NYC, making them feel less bad about their conspicuous consumption and waste.
@Greasy Thumb Guzik: Then how do soda fountains work? I mean, if you have real soda syrup and real CO2 in the machine and you put a cap on it, don’t you have the same product as what you get at Burger King, just in a bottle with a longer shelf life?
@Claystil: Here in Japan, where there isn’t as much room for landfill as in the US, expanded polystyrene is recycled quite a bit.
How EPS is recycled
@cockeye: They’re not the only ones. Think of all the gullible people (especially celebrities) selling carbon offsets! Talk about the scam of the decade.
oops, I meant BUYING carbon offsets!
I don’t see this as Walmart jumping into the whole “Green Craze”, but rather an incident of an overzealous blog being bitchy.
No where on the cup does Walmart give any indication as to the environmental benefits associated to said cup. It is merely stating that the cups that they are using weigh 60% less than comparable paper cups.
on the subject of bottled water (since everyone has beaten this sams club cup to death already)…. drinking bottled water is no different then drinking bottled soda, bottled tea or anything else bottled. you’re getting a beverage. it came from somewhere. It took resources to process it, resources to ship/truck/railroad it to it’s final destination. It doesn’t matter what’s in it. So buying a bottled water is as ecologically friendly (or ecologically unfriendly) as buying a coke or pepsi or snapple.
the only time it is an un-ecofriendly choice is when you buy bottled water and there’s a ready supply of tap water available for convenient use. i.e. using one at home or at the office. when you’re anywhere else odds are there isn’t a spigot available that a) works, b) you can take with you c) is cold and f) is a clean source (i.e. isn’t all nasty and filth covered, like some that I’ve seen in public parks)
So if I’m gonna have to hear it because I bought a bottled water at 7-11 so I can have a beverage while driving I guess I’ll lambast folks who buy a coke for the drive home. There’s no water dispenser in my car and there’s a coke dispenser either. So either they’re both ok or they’re both not ok.
I’m sorry, but how is this Sam’s Club selling something off as “green”? I don’t see “green” mentioned anywhere, only that it weighs less. It looks more like somebody is just jumping to a lot of conclusions, there, because it only says that it weighs less.
@painfullyblunt: doesn’t snapple come in glass bottles?
While reusable cups are the only true green way to go, styrofoam is more ecologically friendly than paper or plastic cups. Although Styrofoam takes a long time to degrade (approximately 20,000 years), the waste that is produced in the process of making cups is much less, the cost of production is less expensive, and Styrofoam does not release toxic substances into the environment, unlike paper and plastic cups.
@mormonunderpants: not to be a troll, but seriously, expanded polystyrene takes between 8,000 and 9,000 years to degrade, it’s made from oil which itself, even before it is formed into polystyrene, has a huge negative impact on the environment, and expanded polystyrene while not tremendously toxic IS the single most present marine pollutant.
Who cares how long it takes to degrade? Bury it in a landfill; it’s not like there’s a shortage of landfill space. It takes far less energy and *fresh water* to produce styrofoam cups than paper ones, and *far* less energy to actually transport them, given the weight savings.
Yeah, great, paper cups biodegrade, if you just throw them out your window and leave them laying by the roadside. They also take more volume in landfills, and don’t biodegrade there, either.
What do you think we have more of to spare? Fresh water, or places to put landfills?
@Phanatic: they’re both terrible for the environment. Such minor distinctions seem too often hyperbolic (i.e. “*far*”) and irrelevant when a simple choice to use niehter option is a pretty damn easy one to make.
Why not: No pandas or Siberian tigers were killed in making this cup.