And people are now collecting these things as fashion accessories.

But if you remember back to when this whole thing started, these reusable cups were invented for one reason, to help reduce waste.

So how the hell did we get so far away from the mark?

A huge thank you to Ground News for sponsoring today's video.

All right, so I'm a 90s kid.

I was basically raised off of super dramatic rock music and disposable Starbucks cups.

I'm not even sure that it would have been possible to bring my own drinking vessel if I were so inclined, but it would have never crossed my mind because that wouldn't have been a cool thing to do and I was terribly insecure.

But today, you can't walk into a coffee shop without seeing some sort of reusable mug for sale, often at least one unique to said coffee shop specifically.

Brands like Hydro Flask, Yeti, and Stanley have become status symbols in their own right in today's society.

We've done videos on all of those companies in the past already and how they rose to fame, but today we're going to be getting into what these names have done to our coffee industry and to our addiction to disposable cups.

To analyze whether or not these cups have actually done anything to make a difference.

Now, I probably don't need to tell you that disposable single-use cups suck.

I feel like that's something that literally everyone can get behind.

We've all heard the stats.

Billions and billions of these things are thrown out every single year and despite the fact that they look like paper, most of them cannot be recycled because there is a plastic lining that apparently we don't know what to do with.

The crazy thing is, is that the paper-ish cups didn't really gain traction until the 1980s when Starbucks started pushing the idea and we already can't imagine life without them.

That's because coffee shops weren't just selling a new product at the time, but an entire cultural shift.

If you've seen our Mocha Pots video, you might remember that back in the day, Italian coffee shop culture was centered around leisure and community.

You'd go there, you'd sip a brew with some of the boys while you're playing cards after a long day's work.

The disposable cup was perhaps the final death blow to this kind of culture and the birth of a new era where speed and convenience were paramount.

Coffee became the emblem of a frenzied working class, a sign that you've got important places to be and things to do.

As one article put it, disposable cups became synonymous with surviving the workday, a reality frequently referenced in our pop culture today.

Double tall lattes, one with no foam and one Starbucks compilation city.

Of course, paper cups aren't the biggest environmental concern that we could be possibly tackling and they definitely aren't the first single-use product to enter the mainstream, but they are perhaps the most symbolic of our modern disposable culture.

It's honestly at the point today where most people probably can't even imagine ordering a drink in a coffee shop and not getting their own cup with it.

Just as this disposable cup culture became the norm, we were also starting to realize that we should probably come up with a different option before we're buried alive in these things,

which is exactly how the first ever barista standard reusable coffee cup was born, KeepCup.

If paper cups were the symbol of a modern throwaway culture, then KeepCup became the symbol of a new enlightened way of living sans unnecessary waste.

They were invented by an Australian brother-sister cafe owning duo who wanted to offer their customers a better, more sustainable option.

These sleek little cups solved all the problems the siblings had with previous options.

They were cute, they were simple to make coffee in, and of course, they were reusable.

They were something that customers and baristas alike could rally behind and they were a pretty big deal.

Early adopters bought these guys primarily for altruistic reasons, but the trend soon spread to the point that in Australia, KeepCup is basically synonymous with any kind of travel mug,

just sort of like how Thermos is here in North America.

If any of our Australian viewers can confirm this one, that would be kind of interesting to see down in the comments below.

Now today, I would say that KeepCup itself is no longer the it thing to have because there is just an ever-expanding array of contenders that have risen to give them some competition.

Fellow, Miir, Kinto, Klean Kanteen, Yeti, et cetera, the list goes on.

KeepCup effectively jump-started an entire industry dedicated to producing the perfect on-the-go option that reduces waste while still being kind of fashionable.

And by 2019, the market was up to $13 billion.

It hit a bit of a snag back then when we had that whole pandemic thing go on, but things have actually bounced back somewhat.

And by 2031, the market is projected to grow to almost $25 billion.

And some good news on that front, perhaps.

There is recent news that Starbucks is going to start allowing customers to use reusable cups in their drive-through and mobile orders again.

We found this news story on Ground News.

We use their app and website, which gathers thousands of news articles in one place with context you won't get anywhere else.

You can check them out at ground.news/futureproof.

Now some of these articles just explain that Starbucks is looking to reduce waste and the basics on how they're implementing this new program,

while others deep dive into the logistics of this and how other coffee chains are following suit, as well as the larger cultural context here.

Over 60 sources are covering this.

However, if you only read right-leaning sources, you might've missed it.

A cool feature that I love about Ground News is it has a blind spot page where you get access to diverse perspectives from all sides, making sure that you're fully informed.

We keep working with Ground News because their platform perfectly aligns with what we are doing here at Future Proof.

We want to empower y'all to make informed decisions by sharpening your critical thinking skills.

So dive right in by going to ground.news/futureproof, or you can scan this QR code to get yourself started.

If you use our link, you'll get 40% off their unlimited access vantage plan, which costs less than your daily coffee run to Starbucks, hopefully in your reusable cup.

So the reusables market is booming though.

Isn't that a good thing?

Shouldn't we be celebrating?

It seems like every single day the travel mug industry is solving another barrier to entry problem.

Don't have space in your backpack?

Get a collapsible mug.

More of a tea person?

Get one with a built-in diffuser.

Hate carrying a mug and a water bottle?

This slick two-in-one option's got you covered.

You can even buy mugs that connect to an app on your phone or ones that are made out of used coffee grounds.

Practically all of these options today are lightweight, leak-proof, and or insulated at the very least.

And the tech on all of these fronts is just getting more and more sophisticated by the day.

There is almost guaranteed to be something to suit your unique lifestyle and needs.

And it's probably going to look absolutely perfect with your Birkenstocks and Konkin Backpack to boot.

We also made videos about those things as well.

But the thing that we noticed while researching for this video is that pretty well every solution to the cup waste problem involves developing a new product.

It's all about buying something different.

There's this underlying attitude that if we can just develop the right product and convince enough people to purchase it, all of our problems will be solved.

An interesting exception to this is Prufrock Coffee.

They have an exchangeable KeepCup program that James Hoffman talked about on his channel in 2019.

The idea was to allow you, the customer, to bring in your dirty old Prufrock KeepCup and exchange it for a fresh, clean one with brewed coffee in it.

That way you didn't have to worry about cleaning the thing out and the baristas aren't seething mad at you when you bring a grimy cup expecting it to be cleaned.

Now this sounds like a pretty reasonable idea, but we couldn't actually find any real news about it since it was announced, so it doesn't seem like it really panned out.

Maybe you Londoners have an update that we might've missed, but my guess is that it was another COVID casualty or just never caught traction for the same reason that nothing else has been working, we're just too fucking lazy.

Now, we're gonna get into the human behavior thing in a minute, but I wanna talk about something else first.

There is also this pattern of innovations in the disposable cup world that try to convince us that we can keep chucking away cups without repercussions.

Every couple of years, there's a new promise of a new cup that's guilt-free.

There are cups that you can eat like an ice cream cone.

Compostable cups are getting closer to being viable apparently, and we technically have the technology to recycle paper cups, even if we're not actually doing it for some reason.

Obviously, we don't have time to get into all of these specific examples, but if you are interested and you wanna see more discussion about these kinds of products and things like that,

you can check out our Reddit page, where people are always sharing weird stuff that they see in our consumer world.

But here's the thing.

You can't just consumerism your way out of consumerism.

Despite all the innovations in design, the absolutely viral popularity, and the universal acceptance of travel mugs as being the thing to have, nobody is using them.

In 2019, when reusable cups were coming into their own at the height of fashion and virtue signaling, some British coffee shops were reporting that not even 2% of customers were bringing their own mug.

Prêt-à-Manger said that they were able to get that number up to a whopping 5% by doubling the discount for reusable mugs.

And I gotta say, 5%?

After bribing customers to do the right thing, we get to 5%?

And that's not just because people don't have access to a good mug.

Of the people who do, in fact, own their own travel mug, only one in six use it every time they go out for coffee, according to research put out by Hubbub and Starbucks in 2020.

And the sad thing is, for me, that seems kinda high, based on my own experience in coffee shops, but either way, it's pathetic.

On their website, KeepCup would argue that this is simply due to a lack of options from the customer's part,

that we would all be willing to sacrifice convenience for the planet if only the right option was available, which is a nice thought.

And I like to think that KeepCup is just a little naive kitten in this circumstance that believes in this fairy tale, but sadly, it's BS.

We have the options.

We have way too many options.

We're overflowing with options.

And sadly, not even 5% of us are using it.

And listen, it's not about us.

We're not bad people.

It's not you and me's fault.

It's because disposability has been baked into the fabric of our culture.

And look, just for reference, we're not saying that if you use a disposable cup, you're an asshole.

The producer of this channel just got this in a disposable cup from a cafe down the street.

So we're all human.

We're all struggling with it.

It says compostable.

Look, it says compostable on the bottom.

Oh my God.

And look, the leaves, you can tell it's sustainable.

It's got the leaves on the side of it.

The sad reality is that it doesn't matter how advanced, convenient, and beautiful these mugs get,

they will never be as convenient as a free cup from the shop that you just chuck away when you're done.

The fact that we have to remember a travel mug, pack it around all day, and then the real clincher, rinse it out when we're done, is just too much to ask.

And yet we keep buying these overbuilt mugs because it makes us feel better.

Like we're making a difference.

And as a bonus, it's a visual signal to others that we're doing the right thing.

We forget that by some estimates from a carbon perspective, you would need to use that cup like 20 to 1,000 times to make it better than a disposable one.

These are resource-intensive products, and the more built up they are, the more that goes into them, the more impact they have.

And if they're just collecting dust on a shelf, that doesn't help the planet or anyone else.

Now, thankfully, there are businesses and researchers experimenting with solutions to this problem, and we've already learned a lot of things.

Discounts may not be super motivating, but there's promise in reframing a cup as an additional cost.

We do this in grocery stores already, asking customers if they want to buy a bag, and we could do the same thing with cups,

forcing us to stop and consider for a moment the consumption cost of our actions.

But there is definitely something deeper here that we need to address, which is why throwaway culture exists in the first place.

There's no one reason, of course, but a big factor is that as a culture, our values have completely shifted in the last century or so.

None of this would be a problem if our items weren't commodified in the way that they are, or we weren't forced into such a frantic culture of efficiency and speed.

Sitting in a coffee shop and sipping with your friends at the end of a workday is just not how coffee is consumed for the most part.

Instead, we're always rushing from place to place, trying to get as much money so that we can buy as much as we possibly can.

One way or another, the only way out of this mess is to change the way that we think about the world, build new habits, or just try not to get depressed along the way.

And here's a slightly more positive take.

You know, every time that you bring your reusable cup into a coffee shop, it makes it that much more likely that the person next to you will too.

We're social creatures.

There's millions of people out there who would just jump on the reusable bandwagon if enough other people did too.

So hopefully, you are not too depressed to keep using your reusable mugs.

And if you did enjoy today's video, make sure that you are subscribed so that you can see more content from us every single week.

Thank you so much for watching.