April Conservation Tip

I see myself as a conservation photographer.
With my images I want to be an ambassador for nature and wildlife, showing people places they might never go to, but they should know about. So that they see what's at stake.
But is taking pictures enough?
No, they also need to be shown and a story told. I try that, too, but I still feel it's not enough.

After sharing some “eco” tips with friends, who almost always are astounded how easy it is to make an positive impact, I thought I share these tips on a at least monthly basis on my blog, to reach even more people, to spread the word.

The idea for this months tip was inspired by an initiative from Starbucks:

As the new Academy of Science opened we took the kids for a first look. Through it is a really stunning museum now, the one thing that impressed me most, was a display of how many paper cups get used daily in the US, and how many trees have to be cut for that. I don't recall the exact numbers, but it was mind boggling. After this visit, I started to use a travel mug for my frequent Starbucks trips. I always have one in the car, and one in my camera bag. But I noticed, that hardly anyone else does.
So for this blog I did a bit research and found the following:

“ If only 50 Starbucks customer a day in every store were to use reusable mugs, Starbucks would save 150,000 disposable paper cups daily. This equals 1.7 million pounds of paper, 3.7 million pounds of solid waste, and 150,000 trees a year”

That's pretty impressive. An average Starbucks store has about 400 customer a day, so the above amount of trees and waste could be saved if only 12.5 % of all customers would use reusable cups....And this is just Starbucks, there is also Peets and many more other coffee shops out there.

Obviously Starbucks noticed that too, and launched the following initiative:

www.starbucks.com/thebigpicture
Just click on the the header (April Conservation Tip) to go directly to the Starbucks website.

Check it out and take part. And in the future, just use these travel mugs that are catching dust in your cabinet!