An Average Joe's Cup of Joe

The Mason jar: perhaps most known for household storage, or, more notoriously, as the mark of a surface-level hipster planning a struggling podcast in a gentrified café, the Mason jar needs no introduction. At the risk of appearing similar to the aforementioned hipster, I have found the Mason jar to be useful for me in my efforts to reduce my carbon footprint. Instead of using the plastic cups and straws characteristic of Starbucks Coffee (the favored caffeine refueling spot for many of my fellow teenage girls), I have found that using a Mason jar for my morning iced coffee to be much less guilt-inducing. Of course, there is the remaining oh-no-am-I-developing-a-caffeine-addiction-at-the-fresh-age-of-18 guilt, but it is a weight to lift off of my environmental conscience.

My preferred method of coffee consumption, whether I’m out getting coffee or at home, is the glorious cold brew. Conveniently, cold brew can be made at home with a reusable filter and requires no electricity and none of those environmentally torturous plastic pods. To make the perfect coffee, I take a drizzle of caramel to the sides of my favorite Mason jar and fill it with ice. I fill the jar with homemade cold brew from the pitcher in the refrigerator and top it off with sustainable creamer, blending it all together into a perfect, mocha elixir.

By making my coffee at home and choosing to avoid single-use plastics, I can at least know that I am actively doing my part to limit the waste I would contribute to the oceans. My part might be small, but it is a part all the same.

While my small steps for sustainability may feel like a drop in the bucket, nay, a drop in the ocean, I am a firm believer that something, anything, is always better than nothing. Though it’s hard to avoid cynicism, especially when it comes to conservation, it’s always been easy for me to avoid slipping into apathy. Realistically, small steps will not avert the climate crisis on our horizon. It is far too late for personal efforts to truly save us, our oceans, our world. Even so, I find it empowering to continue to care, even though the world doesn’t want us to. I would rather spend my life knowing that I tried, that I prioritized the planet when I just as easily could’ve ignored it.

The capitalist systems that govern our world are constantly shifting the blame onto us, for taking showers a few minutes too long, for forgetting our metal straws at home, to distract us from the millions of pounds of plastic waste being dumped directly into the ocean every single day. They don’t want us to see the choking smoke they pump into the sky, because then our anger might land on them, then we might call for real change.

Even so, even though there is an inevitability to the climate crisis that makes it all the more dejecting, I want to know that I did what I could. Maybe my coffee cups would never have made a difference. Maybe they would’ve been a minuscule part in a major landfill or plastic ocean dump. Maybe my 365 plastic coffee cups wouldn’t really have compared to the mountains of trash that still exist. But maybe, my caramel-covered Mason jar coffee did make a change. Even if 365 cups aren’t that many in the grand scheme of things, I am not the only one able to make personal steps away from the habits that are choking our planet and polluting our oceans.

Perhaps even by writing this story, I may convince another new or seasoned coffee addict to try out more sustainable methods. Then, my effort is not alone. It is not so small, but my contribution to a cause uniting millions of strangers: climate activists, ocean lovers, regular Joes getting their regular cup of joe. Maybe, my desire to do whatever I can to help our oceans is not one that I hold alone.