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America runs on coffee, and Americans are a people on the run. Every year, we drink more than 100 billion cups of coffee and of those, at least 14.4 billion are served in disposable paper to-go cups. That’s enough cups to wrap the earth 55 times!

Traditionally, those paper cups have been made with a non-renewable, non-biodegradable petrochemical plastic coating. But all that could end with the recent introduction of the new Ecotainer ^[5]cup from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters ^[6].

The Vermont-based wholesale coffee company known for its fairly traded, organic products and impressive business ethics ^[7], recently teamed up with International Paper ^[7] to launch the Ecotainer ^[5], an eco-friendly hot beverage cup that is fully compostable.

Instead of using petroleum, the waterproof lining of Ecotainer ^[5]cup is made from a corn-based bio-plastic ^[8]called polylactic acid, or PLA. In addition to being derived from a renewable resource, PLA will also fully biodegrade under proper conditions. According to company research, by using a these new cups Green Mountain Coffee Roasters ^[6] will conserve the consumption of nearly a quarter of a million pounds of petrochemical materials every year.

The Ecotainer ^[5]cups are currently in use only where GMRC ^[6] coffee is sold, but begining this fall International Paper ^[9] will be marketing them as a commercial product with the goal to make the Ecotainer the standard hot beverage cup of the foodservice industry. What’s more, GMCR ^[6] and International Paper ^[9] are also begining research towards developing a corn-based plastic drink lid.

So find a Green Mountain Coffee ^[6]merchant near you and start lobbying your local java hut (or behemoth chain – Starbucks, anyone?) to serve their own brew in Ecotainers ^[5], too!