If the coffee is good, I just ask for some sugar, but what I would really like to be able to ask for is not to be served in plastic cups. In many places in my city the plastic cup is the only option.
If I could change anything about the culture of serving coffee, it would be, without a doubt, to eliminate plastic cups.
Microplastic pollution is a recurring topic of conversation when I talk to my friend Rafael. Rafael is an oceanographer with a specialization in ecology and knows quite a bit about the subject, having studied it frequently during his very long career.
So what's a girl like me doing with a guy like this?
Generally, drinking coffee. This photo was taken last Saturday, after a meeting we had with an arborist group. We had a macchiato with a big chocolate chip cookie in La Panetteria.
In this coffee shop, where I go very often because it is in the shopping center in front of my residence, they usually serve coffee in ceramic cups. Unless you buy it to go. But this is not the common rule in my city.
The most common is to see plastic cups.
This picture was taken last Sunday, just on Father's Day. My husband and I had a latte with Alejandro, who is an excellent poet and storyteller, one of the best singers I know and one of the best people. The three of us are very good friends.
I am not in the photo, because I was taking the picture.
This café is in the Crab Market shopping center. I plan to do a chronicle of this place because their coffee is very good.
As is almost the rule in my city, here they always serve coffee in plastic cups.
Plastic cups are not just a polluting whim, they are a cultural response to several problems
Going back to my conversations with my friend Rafael, he drew my attention to the enormous pollution and public health problem that plastic represents. In measurements they recently made on the presence of microplastics in fish off our coasts, the figures are alarming. The water is also contaminated with microplastics.... And we produce plastics non-stop.
Before I finish, I take a little break to show myself in this picture being terrible at taking selfies and to announce in the middle of this gloomy topic some good news: we will plant native trees in my city. This initiative is my dear friend's and some people are already joining in.
However, despite the enormous problem, it is not easy to get rid of plastic. Even if we leave out the enormity of the industry it moves and the millions of jobs that depend on its production, distribution and marketing chain, plastic was and continues to be a material response to many needs. Just look around.
Just look, sometimes, at our coffee cups in cafes, public events of all kinds.
During the pandemic, the plastic cup was the norm in many establishments. Disposable was safer.
However, if a genie were to come out of my coffee pot and grant me one wish for a change I would make when ordering coffee, that would be it: no plastic cups. And I would try to spread that wish to as many people as possible.
Surely Rafael's smile would be even wider than in the first photo...
Quebracho seedlings. I hope to see them in a few years growing in the various public spaces of my city.
