Holiday Mug Showdown: Ranking the Most Eco-Friendly Options for Your Hot Drink

Grabbing yourself a hot drink this holiday season? Here’s what you need to know about your mug choice. We’re ranking five of the most common mug options based on their plastic and chemical pollution.

#5 The Single-Use Plastic-Lined Paper Cup

Coming in at number five is the single-use plastic-lined paper cup that you will get at any café when you order a drink to go. It’s only meant to be used once so it doesn’t pass the plastic reduction test. Plus, while these cups look like they’re made of paper, they’re typically lined with a plastic inner coating – which, especially when heated, can leach chemicals like lead, chromium, cadmium, and microplastics. One study found that approximately 25,000 microplastic particles will leach from a paper cup’s inner plastic film into a cup of hot water after only 15 minutes! Even compostable single-use cups aren’t great – they only properly break down in industrial compost facilities and can still cause damage to the marine environment. No thanks!

#4 The Hard Plastic Reusable Cup

A slightly better option is the hard plastic reusable cup. Think plastic “mugs” that aren’t high quality – they’re not totally insulated like a stainless steel or double walled glass mug and are often branded by food and beverage companies and handed out as freebies. Being made of plastic, the higher the temperature and the higher the acidity of the drink, the more plastic compounds will leach out into the beverage. And they’re made of plastic…a material we’d like to reduce in the world as it negatively impacts not only our health but the health of the environment. One study found that leachates from plastic polypropylene cups, plastic polystyrene lids, and paper cups were all toxic to aquatic invertebrates, causing developmental delays and abnormalities to larvae. Basically, the longer littered plastic and paper cups sit in a body of water (think stream, pond, or lake), the more chemicals will leach into the environment, negatively impacting the development of tiny invertebrates.

#3 The Stainless Steel Mug

Stainless steel mugs are where it’s at! These are super sturdy and can be used many, many times. They insulate hot (and cold) drinks very well, keeping beverages at the temperature you want to drink them at for longer. Stainless steel is made from iron, nickel, and chromium and is considered non-toxic. Just double check your favourite stainless steel brand to make sure they don’t use lead in their vacuum sealing process (which allows for the mug to be insulated) – if the bottle becomes damaged over time, that’s when chemicals can start seeping through the lining.

#2 The Reusable Mug You Already Own

At this point, most of us have a mug in our homes. For some of us, it lives a little further back in the cupboard. However, using what we have is the fundamental way to reduce waste! Maybe it’s not an on-trend Hydroflask…but it will do the job. One key to remember about reusable items is that they often take more materials and energy to make than their single-use counterpart – so it’s important that we reuse the mugs we have as much as we can.

#1 The Dine-In Mug

If you are planning to sit on the patio or inside your cozy local café, take the ‘for here’ mug which will be reused countless times. These mugs are almost always ceramic, china, porcelain, or glass which are generally considered non-toxic. This is the best way to avoid waste. And what better time than during the busy holiday season to slow down, take a moment to yourself and enjoy your coffee or tea with a good book or friends. A word of caution: check if your mug is chipped or cracked before taking a sip. The glaze on porcelain, china or ceramic mugs may contain lead or cadmium which can leach through flaws. The more you know!

It may seem like a small thing, but coffee cups are invading our landfills and environment! Take the Dirty Dozen – the top 12 most commonly found items on the shoreline each year. Coffee cups continue to show up year after year. This report suggests over 250 billion single-use plastic-lined cups are used each year. If you lined up those cups end to end, it would measure about 30 million kilometres, or approximately the distance from the earth to the moon 75 times.  Without consistent guidelines across cities, provinces, countries, it’s not always easy to be aware of the current regulations. Regardless of the regulations, reducing our single-use coffee cups is one SIMPLE thing each of us can do to reduce plastic from showing up on our shorelines.