BUT THIS IS IMPORTAAAAAANT.

Wouldn't this particular task-force fall under an umbrella plan to reduce overall waste in the city? Ya know, one of those 'green' things.

My biggest f*cking peeve is that Tims cups are no longer recyclable.

DNRTFA.
That being said, I lived in TO.
Coffee? Serious business.

/seriously

Coffee cups r serious business.

FTFA:

City staff said customers who bring their own cups should get a 20-cent discount on tea or coffee drinks. They also said paper cups with plastic lids should be banned, because paper recyclers complain the lids contaminate the paper.


Make a sign that says "Please DO NOT throw plastic lids in with the paper cups. Please use plastic bin for lids. Thank you."

Now give me my $50,000!

Hey, Tim Horton's is serious business, eh?

What's that? Like $3 US? Almost enough for a cup at Starbucks... But not quite.

Were they Accenture consultants? I bet they were.

/farking USELESS company
//don't even get me started

How about:

The city sells designated 'permanent coffee cups'. Businesses in the city participate, give discounts when they are used in purchasing coffee at participating businesses. Cups are used in perpetuity by citizens.

Incentives:
- city: generates revenue; cuts down on trash
- citizens: discounts; feelings of 'doing my part'
- businesses: more business traffic; cut costs on purchasing cups

Problem solved!

(That took me 1 second to think of and 1 minute to type.)

Perhaps they should have been playing RRRolll up the Rim, one win might have paid for it

Also forgot to mention, Tims gives you 10 cents off if you bring in your own cup. Coffee keeps warm for a lot longer, AND your farts start to smell like roses.

/Although the two months of roll up the rim absolutely devastates any sort of waste reduction efforts during the prior year.

And if not for government, who would provide these crucial public services?

I'll gladly do my part to be a well paid participant in this issue. I'm civic minded like that.

I actually read the article. This is a waste management problem for the city. Apparently Toronto produces a few hundred million coffee cups of waste per year. Waste management is expensive.

This is what happens when you put a bunch of people with worthless college degrees like marketing and business together and tell them to figure something out.

Coffee cups are dangerous. They can contain DHMO.

When you absolutely, positively need nothing whatsofarkingever to happen..

...appoint a committee to do it.

Only in Ameri... Oh. Never mind.

Miller and his council of half-wits have been tilting at windmills for too long. When even the Red Star is starting to publish stories critical of their wacko agenda, you know something is wrong.

Hopefully the crippled economy will force some of these city leaders to focus on issues with a bit more importance, although apparently not in Calgary where they're still planning to throw twenty million dollars at a couple of designer footbridges.

This is a country of red tape, written by smug assholes, and enforced by empowered hall monitors.

For example: My buddy with three kids (a single Dad no less) and a mortgage fully qualifies for EI, but they made him 14 weeks until it kicked in, giving him every excuse in the book. I'm sure he had to go to the food bank atleast once, and he wouldn't let me lend him money. He paid into the system, his kids suffered and yeah hes bitter.

$50k, or a small portion of that would really helped him.

And idiot boy Miller can't figure out why TO's debt is skyrocketing out of control on his watch. Maybe he needs (another) committee to study that one.

Have everyone bring in their own coffee mug.

Now give me my $50,000.

/We just did this at my workplace after someone pointed out the use of Styrofoam cups at a meeting about recycling to cut our budget.

DecemberNitro: Were they Accenture consultants? I bet they were.

/farking USELESS company
//don't even get me started


a-frigity-men my brutha

Coffee goes where?

antiFodder: Coffee cups are dangerous. They can contain DHMO.

It's worse than that. They typically contain DHMO mixed with flavoring that contains an addictive drug.

FTA: $50,000 worth of consultants' reports.

Don't they mean 'consultant's report? More than one and that's actually not that expensive...

Considering how much cash the City of Toronto regularly blows through on sheer stupidity, 50K isn't really that much regardless of how it was spent.

A drop in the carafe, so to speak...

deliberation by a 40-member task force, split into five subcommittees

Ah, now that's the Toronto red tape we know and love.

SwallowTheKnife:
Unfortunately 1 second too soon.

Except they aren't city ordained...but most (popular) establishments do give you some sort of discount for bringing in your own mug.

All they (the city) needs to do is write "Doing My Part" on it, and get busniesses on board.

I guess that makes too much sense, didn't cost enough to figure out.

I currently work for a 10,000 person company. They decided that a way to trim the budget was to stop providing styrofoam cups in the break areas. On the surface, it was a "good idea" as it would save a pretty big chunk of change over the course of a year.

Three interesting things happened pretty quickly, however.

The sign in our breakroom that announced "To protect the environment, we're no longer providing styrofoam cups for beverages" was quickly appended with a passive-aggressive addition: "What's next, saving our sewer systems by no longer providing toilet paper?"

We were embarrassed repeatedly in sales meetings when we couldn't provide coffee to potential customers because we NO LONGER HAD CUPS TO PUT IT IN. I am sure we lost contracts when we were trying to convince people that we were a top-quality outfit--but had to say "uh, sorry, here maybe you can sip some coffee from my pencil holder..."

and

People went absolutely nuts, despite that everyone was given a cheap-ass refillable thermal mug with the corporate logo, I've never seen anything unite workers so unanimously as this--unfortunately it was for the purpose of "what cheap bastards they are, can you believe they won't even spring for farking cups???"


I hadn't even thought about the point made in the article about potential disease issues if and when someone who doesn't clean their cup/mug touches it to dispensers.

After reading the article and thinking about it, I just drank my last cup of filtered water at work. I hadn't even considered that the slobs in my office are rubbing their unwashed petri dish cups against the water dispenser--especially during cold and flu season.

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the expanding needs of the bureaucracy.

Open the smoking lounge back up in your airport. That's all Toronto needs to know about anything.

buy a farkin travel mug. problem solved

toontownj: And idiot boy Miller can't figure out why TO's debt is skyrocketing out of control on his watch. Maybe he needs (another) committee to study that one.

Didn't he already do that?

FTFA: "Coffee shops worry about customers bringing in dirty cups: If germy cups rub up against coffee dispensers, they could spread disease. And if customers get sick drinking from badly cleaned cups, the coffee shop could get the blame."

Really?? THAT'S their excuse? I sure hope nobody tells the convenience stores where I refill my plastic travel mug for pennies on the dollar. Or the truck stops that allow truckers to fill their own thermos. Or any of the other places that have been doing this for decades. We may just have a public health crisis on our hands!!

//For $25,000 I'll solve the problem AND personally cockpunch every idiot on that committee and any consultant who was involved with this big ol' bag of stupid. It's a bargain!

busy chillin': FTFA:

City staff said customers who bring their own cups should get a 20-cent discount on tea or coffee drinks. They also said paper cups with plastic lids should be banned, because paper recyclers complain the lids contaminate the paper.


Make a sign that says "Please DO NOT throw plastic lids in with the paper cups. Please use plastic bin for lids. Thank you."

Now give me my $50,000!

Not so fast. The committee for multiculturalism would dictate sign would need translations in 20 languages, and would have to be vetted by another committee to ensure the language does not offend any "cultural sensitivities" (aka whiners).

Then another environmental impact committee will need to approve the sign is made of materials that biodegrade & do not pollute the environment.

And of course, it has to be 80% Canadian Content

Once the sign is produced and 10,000 manufactured, some bureaucrat from Quebec will discover an accent-grave was missed from one of the "e"s in the French translation, and the run would need to be scrapped and/or reworked to prevent Quebec from separating.

Of course, the sign, being on city property, must be installed by a union employee at $45/hour

And the "starve the government" folks have yet another perfect example.

Bring your own cups? Now the water usage goes up cleaning said cups. Why don't you just club a baby seal?

Timmy the Tumor:
We were embarrassed repeatedly in sales meetings when we couldn't provide coffee to potential customers because we NO LONGER HAD CUPS TO PUT IT IN. I am sure we lost contracts when we were trying to convince people that we were a top-quality outfit--but had to say "uh, sorry, here maybe you can sip some coffee from my pencil holder..."

If you'd (not you personally) been a bit SMRTer, you'd have acquired a bunch of inexpensive ceramic mugs for when clients visited. You know, like how you have extra chairs for them to sit in? I bet mugs from a restaurant supply house are like $1 each.

Day_Old_Dutchie:
Once the sign is produced and 10,000 manufactured, some bureaucrat from Quebec will discover an accent-grave was missed from one of the "e"s in the French translation, and the run would need to be scrapped and/or reworked printed in Quebec at three times the cost to prevent Quebec from separating.

Day_Old_Dutchie: excellent post deleted

It's funny because it's true.

Timmy the Tumor:

The sign in our breakroom that announced "To protect the environment, we're no longer providing styrofoam cups for beverages" was quickly appended with a passive-aggressive addition: "What's next, saving our sewer systems by no longer providing toilet paper?"

That may be "interesting", but it's hardly relevant to the cost/environmental issues. Like you said, it's just passive-aggressive bullshiat. Every company has the office dickhead.

We were embarrassed repeatedly in sales meetings when we couldn't provide coffee to potential customers because we NO LONGER HAD CUPS TO PUT IT IN. I am sure we lost contracts when we were trying to convince people that we were a top-quality outfit--but had to say "uh, sorry, here maybe you can sip some coffee from my pencil holder..."

Because buying a gross of ceramic mugs with the company logo is too complex? I'm an independent contractor - every company I've ever spent time in has a cupboard full of these damned things over the sink. Maybe that's why your potential customers thought you guys were lame..

People went absolutely nuts, despite that everyone was given a cheap-ass refillable thermal mug with the corporate logo, I've never seen anything unite workers so unanimously as this--unfortunately it was for the purpose of "what cheap bastards they are, can you believe they won't even spring for farking cups???"

Yeah, you're right again. That's just nuts. Everyone got their nifty cups, but they're still biatching?

Seriously, it sounds like you work with a pack of morons.

A task force, sure. But no focus groups? How can a committee decide anything without hearing from focus groups?

mod3072: FTFA: "Coffee shops worry about customers bringing in dirty cups: If germy cups rub up against coffee dispensers, they could spread disease. And if customers get sick drinking from badly cleaned cups, the coffee shop could get the blame."

Really?? THAT'S their excuse? I sure hope nobody tells the convenience stores where I refill my plastic travel mug for pennies on the dollar. Or the truck stops that allow truckers to fill their own thermos. Or any of the other places that have been doing this for decades. We may just have a public health crisis on our hands!!

It's one thing when businesses allow or even encourage this on their own. People wouldn't think about a contaminated coffee urn every time they got sick.

But as soon as you have the government mandating this policy, with the requisite publicity and "public health studies" (paid for by the paper cup manufacturers), you better believe the lawsuits are gonna start flying.

Memes Ate My Balls: Open the smoking lounge back up in your airport. That's all Toronto needs to know about anything.

The Toronto airport has many more problems than the lack of a smoking lounge. It's the worst airport in the world, despite the many billions they spent on the new terminal.

SwallowTheKnife: My biggest f*cking peeve is that Tims cups are no longer recyclable.

Many Tim's in Toronto accept coffee cups in a recycling bin. Are you in Toronto?

Anyway, Toronto's waste management problem runs much deeper than just coffee cups. Michigan doesn't desperately want our trash anymore and the Adams Mine plan won't ever be revived.

GavinTheAlmighty: Memes Ate My Balls: Open the smoking lounge back up in your airport. That's all Toronto needs to know about anything.

The Toronto airport has many more problems than the lack of a smoking lounge. It's the worst airport in the world, despite the many billions they spent on the new terminal.

SwallowTheKnife: My biggest f*cking peeve is that Tims cups are no longer recyclable.

Many Tim's in Toronto accept coffee cups in a recycling bin. Are you in Toronto?

Anyway, Toronto's waste management problem runs much deeper than just coffee cups. Michigan doesn't desperately want our trash anymore and the Adams Mine plan won't ever be revived.

Um no.

Newark is the worst airport in the world.

GavinTheAlmighty: Memes Ate My Balls: Open the smoking lounge back up in your airport. That's all Toronto needs to know about anything.

The Toronto airport has many more problems than the lack of a smoking lounge. It's the worst airport in the world, despite the many billions they spent on the new terminal.

SwallowTheKnife: My biggest f*cking peeve is that Tims cups are no longer recyclable.

Many Tim's in Toronto accept coffee cups in a recycling bin. Are you in Toronto?

Anyway, Toronto's waste management problem runs much deeper than just coffee cups. Michigan doesn't desperately want our trash anymore and the Adams Mine plan won't ever be revived.

Yeah, I spent 3 hours driving from Toronto back to Michigan behind a trash truck. That was great.

You guys are light years ahead on the recycling-on-the-streets. I'm not surprised at the red tape (gotta preserve the mosaic with the multicultural committee, eh?) but except for our kickass yet totally incomplete bottle bill, you totally trump us on addressing trash issues.

Hell, my hometown even stopped taking colored glass. And we never had curbside, but had to drive halfway across the city to a central recycling area.

And we were lucky, cause at least we were a suburb that *had* recycling. My mom gave us all the bottle money if we did the other recycling, though, so that gave me incentive to a) recycle, b) keep the recycling sorted in our garage until we had a minivan full, and c) drink lots of cans of pop. Thanks mom!

So Toronto is spending about $50,000 dollars to more effectively address a waste management issue that costs millions?

How exactly is this a problem? Don't people want efficient government?

kpaxoid: GavinTheAlmighty: Memes Ate My Balls: Open the smoking lounge back up in your airport. That's all Toronto needs to know about anything.

The Toronto airport has many more problems than the lack of a smoking lounge. It's the worst airport in the world, despite the many billions they spent on the new terminal.

...

Um no.

Newark is the worst airport in the world.

Um no.

Chicago O'Hare is the worst airport in the world. Have you TRIED sitting on those men's room toilets??!!??

I guess that leaves the questions as to how people recycle Tims* coffee-flavoured beverage when they're done with it.

*That's the proper spelling, my fellow Grammar-Supremacists, as the wise men running Tims have determined that apostrophes are intimidating to your average Tims customer. Feh.

/Tims

ABQGOD: Have everyone bring in their own coffee mug.

Now give me my $50,000.

/We just did this at my workplace after someone pointed out the use of Styrofoam cups at a meeting about recycling to cut our budget.

Except you'd have to use the mug for roughly 4 years before you actually save any energy versus styrofoam cups. Which isn't unheard of I suppose, but just saying.

mod3072: FTFA: "Coffee shops worry about customers bringing in dirty cups: If germy cups rub up against coffee dispensers, they could spread disease. And if customers get sick drinking from badly cleaned cups, the coffee shop could get the blame."

Really?? THAT'S their excuse? I sure hope nobody tells the convenience stores where I refill my plastic travel mug for pennies on the dollar. Or the truck stops that allow truckers to fill their own thermos. Or any of the other places that have been doing this for decades. We may just have a public health crisis on our hands!!

//For $25,000 I'll solve the problem AND personally cockpunch every idiot on that committee and any consultant who was involved with this big ol' bag of stupid. It's a bargain!

You should probably start cockpunching some lawyers. It's fear of litigation that has driven companies to making stupid decisions like this.

You can guarantee this is going to get the idea in people's heads, and some parasite will get the brilliant idea of suing a gas station next time they get a cold.

You don't have to have a solid case- you don't even have to win- You just have to argue for a settlement, because it's cheaper for the company you're extorting money from than defending themselves.

/shouldn't need any more excuses to cockpunch a lawyer

Timmy the Tumor: I currently work for a 10,000 person company. They decided that a way to trim the budget was to stop providing styrofoam cups in the break areas. On the surface, it was a "good idea" as it would save a pretty big chunk of change over the course of a year.

Three interesting things happened pretty quickly, however.

The sign in our breakroom that announced "To protect the environment, we're no longer providing styrofoam cups for beverages" was quickly appended with a passive-aggressive addition: "What's next, saving our sewer systems by no longer providing toilet paper?"

We were embarrassed repeatedly in sales meetings when we couldn't provide coffee to potential customers because we NO LONGER HAD CUPS TO PUT IT IN. I am sure we lost contracts when we were trying to convince people that we were a top-quality outfit--but had to say "uh, sorry, here maybe you can sip some coffee from my pencil holder..."

and

People went absolutely nuts, despite that everyone was given a cheap-ass refillable thermal mug with the corporate logo, I've never seen anything unite workers so unanimously as this--unfortunately it was for the purpose of "what cheap bastards they are, can you believe they won't even spring for farking cups???"


I hadn't even thought about the point made in the article about potential disease issues if and when someone who doesn't clean their cup/mug touches it to dispensers.

After reading the article and thinking about it, I just drank my last cup of filtered water at work. I hadn't even considered that the slobs in my office are rubbing their unwashed petri dish cups against the water dispenser--especially during cold and flu season.

So 10,000 people were using styrofoam cups--which most likely weren't recycled--and now someone said 'here, use this free, re-usable mug instead' ?

Good.