By Amelia Glynn

When I was growing up I never liked the flavor of coffee. My parents always told me it was an acquired taste, and to just wait until I got to college. But somehow, my taste buds never cooperated. 

I do, however, have a serious weakness for San Francisco Martha Brother’s vanilla soy chai. My cravings are sporadic and I never seem to be organized enough to have my own mug at hand when I feel one coming on. So about three years ago, I started saving to-go cups and plastic lids. My motivation was part guilt, part curiosity (to see how many I would amass) and part reuse — I try to remember to pack a cup and lid in my bag when I know I’ll be near a Martha Brother’s — just in case.

When people stumble upon my stash, (“Whoa, Amelia! Uh…what’s with all the cups?”), they comfort me with stories of lovers and roommates who have “the same problem” as I do. Every so often when I’m at someone’s house I’ll open a cupboard while searching for a glass, and behold! I’ll spy a collection of used coffee cups peering back at me. Discovering other closeted cup-savers never fails to give me that warm fuzzy feeling.

According to Metaefficient.com, we used and disposed approximately 14.4 billion paper cups in 2005 — or a mind-boggling 410,000 paper cups every 15 minutes. That number is expected to grow to 23 billion by 2010 unless we change our current coffee-drinking ways. Visit the coffee waste calculator to record your own sobering contribution to the landfill.

And to read about people with even more peculiar (or revolutionary) reuse habits than mine, check out my feature story for LIME:  "Garbage In, Art Out"