We are hikers, we are bikers, we are paddlers and campers and surfers. We carry drinks most everywhere we go. In the office, at the beach, we needed the strongest, lightest water containers we could get. So did all our friends. Now we are in the business of manufacturing and distributing the water mugs of our dreams. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Plastic is no less natural than concrete, paper, steel or any other manmade product. The issues with plastic are around safety and the throwaway purpose of many plastic products.

"When auditing office waste, it's common for us to see bins with 20% disposable cups. Unique Cup is a great way to reduce the use of disposable cups, given they are not recyclable!

Great Forest, Environmental Consultants

Disposable cups, be they made from paper, plastic or polystyrene, demonstrate a significant problem for our environment. Not only does it result in a vast number of disposable cups ending up in landfill, it puts unnecessary pressure on our natural resources to manufacture and transport them. Single use disposable cups are definitely not the biggest perpetrator destroying the environment, but they are a clear demonstration of how convenience and consumption has become increasingly out of control.

Very few disposable coffee cups aren't made from recycled paper. Most disposable cups are manufactured from 100% bleached virgin paperboard, sprayed with a polyethylene coating. They are often impregnated with toxic dyes which add to the difficulty in recycling. The plastic lining means they are not easily recycled. Biodegrading of disposable cups, particularly in dry parts of the world, can take 50 years or more. When disposable cups are compostable they must to be placed in actual compost bins not the garbage to be recycled, otherwise they remain landfill.

On average, each disposable cup contains 5% of the raw materials used in manufacture and delivery. This is why reduce is the first principle of sustainability. According to Susan Freinkel, author of "Plastic a Toxic Love Story" over half of all plastics produced go into single use applications.

Independent Life Cycle Assessment has been conducted by The Centre for Design at RMIT comparing the Unique Cup with disposables. Its findings were conclusive, over a year; Unique Cups use half the carbon, one third of water use and half the energy compared with disposables. These figures reduce further over the expected lifespan of the average two year lifespan of the Unique Cup.

Based on data extrapolated from the research of Dr Martin Hocking, from two articles published in 1991 and 1994, we anticipate the break even with disposables to be as low as 15 uses.

If you compare 1 Unique Cup to 300+ disposable cups used over a year it represents 86 grams of plastic to 900+ grams of plastic contained in disposables.

Use of reusables gathers momentum for behavior change and creates advocacy for a better world !!!