And of course, trees are elegant and amazing organisms that deserve better than to be pulped into coffee cups -- think Stradivarius. Forests generate value with an ease industry will never replicate. The unmeasured economic value provided by Canada's boreal forest for things like water filtration and air purification has been has been estimated at $93 billion. That is two and a half times as much as the combined economic value of the forestry, mining, oil and gas and hydroelectric industries in the boreal forest. This would represent eight per cent of Canada's entire GDP, and trees don't need a pension or health care. And yet we keep grinding them up -- North America uses 60 per cent of the world's paper cups, 130 billion of them per year. Those cups require about 50 million trees and 33 billion gallons of water, which could sequester 9.3 million tonnes of CO2 and quench 550,000 drought-stricken citizens of the state of Georgia, without even asking them to lower their ridiculous consum

My husband's job is trying to become green-friendly so one of the first changes they are making is removing all paper cups from the water cooler or coffee areas and requesting employees to bring in mugs --- Your clip shows me how it is a bigger problem than I realized and how more companies should try this simple idea that carries such a large positive impact on the environment.

Yeah, I didn't know either 'til I read the article. But then I don't use much paper at all.