Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, March 17, 2007
Tim Hortons contest a litterbug
Rolling up the rim of your morning cuppa might win you an SUV, but critics say it is the environment that loses.
Tim Hortons customers across Canada began peeling back the lips of their coffee cups yesterday as the fast-food giant rolled out its annual Roll Up the Rim to Win contest.
But some environmentalists say what has become a beloved Canadian ritual since its introduction in 1986 promotes waste and propagates littering.
“People buy more cups of coffee and if they don’t win, they’ll just toss it,” said Don Dick, Alberta director of Pitch In Canada, a national non-profit organization concerned about the proliferation of packaging and its effects on the landscape.
“If they want people to buy their product, there’s better ways to go about it. [The cup] doesn’t melt down or disappear into our environment when it’s tossed away. I just fills up our garbage more and it also eats up our paper to make it.”
Mr. Dick suggests the company should turn to small scratch cards instead of using treated paper cups for the promotion and launch more customer-awareness campaigns. (Source: GPI Atlantic)
COMMENTARY (From 2008)
Another one of my occasional rants. This one’s on those discarded roll up the rim cups you see all over the place in any urban space. I’m not alone in my disgust it seems.
Here’s a shocking display of a pile of cups collected in one day at the University of Western Ontario.