the Evil Line

Of course it's better for the environment to bring your own mug to the coffee shop. Or maybe not.

There are a bunch of problems with this study; it looks like they're calculating "energy of manufacture" in a very simple and probably inaccurate way, and I'd like them to include "energy of delivery" and "energy of disposal" (ie, gasoline for the garbage truck), both of which are costs that occur many times for the disposable cups and only once for the reusable. But it is striking anyway - I wouldn't have guessed that the environmental cost of washing a mug is comparable to the cost of manufacturing a styrofoam cup.