Documentation: Weeks 3-4

My first attempt at an aquatint etching (using powdered resin to create tonal gradation & a grainy watercolour texture)

A third year student’s comment: “Come on… Surely coffee isn’t that toxic!”

I laughed. That’s not what I was trying to say, but I love hearing surprising new readings of my work. 

My thought process for this little drawing was that each time we buy a takeaway cup of coffee, the milk comes from an industry that is responsible for most of our carbon emissions (“50% of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions are attributable tomethane and nitrous oxide, predominantly from agriculture” - A dairy farm is not greenhouse gas neutral (carboNZero media release) PDF) and dairy giant Fonterra is powered mostly by coal (55% - Fonterra Energy website) which “creates more emissions per unit of energy produced when compared with oil or gas” (this article)

Not only that but takeaway packaging is another huge problem in terms of waste and emissions: “According to a study conducted by Starbucks and the Alliance for the Environmental Innovation (April 2000), each paper cup manufactured is responsible for 0.24 lbs of CO2 emissions.” (That’s 108 grams. If you have a coffee five times a week, that’s 28 KILOGRAMS of carbon emissions in a year. And that doesn’t include the plastic lid. Also, if the research was funded by Starbucks I feel that a lot of the stats might well have been rounded down in other ways, too.)

So whether coffee is toxic is debatable, but our takeaway coffee habit is just another way we individual consumers mindlessly contribute our small part - and in some cases on a daily basis - towards our country’s embarrassingly high carbon emissions.

Let the record show that I never never use takeaway containers. I also never eat or drink while driving or walking. It’s something I picked up while living in Japan, where it’s culturally considered rude to eat while in motion: if it’s time to eat or drink, you find somewhere to sit down. Simple as that. So, if I don’t have time to sit in the cafe and drink my coffee from a proper cup, I obviously won’t have time to enjoy it properly and therefore won’t bother buying one. Not only are they an environmental disaster, I think that the need to consume on-the-go food and beverages is an indication of what is fundamentally a lifestyle problem, and we all need to slow down and consume with more mindfulness.