Dahye Kim
As coffee became an essential part of an urban lifestyle, easy disposing habits also became a routine for us. The motive for this piece was reducing coffee related waste. One of the largest coffee companies, Starbucks, produces six billion disposable cups each year. Most of the cups are used very temporarily and thrown away easily. While these cups are in our hands less than a day, it takes 20 years to decompose, and for the plastic lids, it takes more than 450 years to completely break down. Most of the waste that is not recycled or used ends up in the ocean, and they are busy invading the marine life.
In order to increase the awareness of disposable cups waste situation, this artwork demonstrates what the Ocean can look like if we produced less waste by bringing our own cups to drink coffee. The materials for this cup are a used Starbucks coffee cup and used Pepsi plastic bottle. Keeping the style of the coffee brand’s font and its arrangement was critical so that people would know what “Bring your own cup and… we proudly conserve” is targeting. Original words (for example, Decaf, shots, syrup…) to specify the types of coffee drinks were changed to the key qualities for a sustainable life. This also is an acrostic that makes the word “nature” when you read the first letters vertically. In order to increase visual aspect of the sea, the plastic bottle was cut and painted blue, which depicts deep blue sea surrounded by beautiful colors of corals reefs. Because of the reused plastic section, a candle was put into the cup to so it can be used as a decorative lantern.