InCycle Cup

I was on Facebook the other day and noticed a post by Alaska Airlines (who I worked for over the past summer) about switching all of their coffee cups to this new locally made, InCycle cup. It is made right here in Washington state, in Arlington! I was interested because they said it was made of 50% post-consumer products and is 100% recyclable. So, I looked up the cup and found a couple interesting videos. I learned that more than 25 billion plastic cups are thrown away each year in the United States, that was shocking. The InCycle cup is completely recyclable! This video shows the process of making an InCycle cup:

The InCycle cup is trying to help promote sustainability by making a coffee cup that is made from recycled water bottles. One cool thing about these cups is that they do not cost more than the standard plastic cup, so it is even easier to make a choice to switch to greener products. If you can't avoid using plastic cups, then you might as well choose one that can be recycled and is made from recycled materials. 

This caught my eye, especially because I feel like it is extremely hard for the airline industry to become sustainable, but Alaska is doing a lot to make improvements to their business. They have made it easily available to read their sustainability report from 2012. It is the biggest link on their "About Us" page of their website. Because of my interest in Alaska, I am going to look into their sustainability report and see what they are doing to improve their business and become more sustainable. I think they have a pretty big goal ahead of them if they are going to try to green their operation, but I know that it would give them a big competitive advantage if they succeed in this.