This is the number of plastic cups (about one million) that are used on airline flights in the US every six hours.
For a lot of us, it's hard to wrap our minds around really huge numbers. When you can actually see just how enormous it is, it's pretty shocking. These images were made by photographer Chris Jordan who takes all of these crazy statistics on how much paper we use, cellphones we throw away, etc. and constructs images out of them in a way that we can see and understand them. His exhibit, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, is a big eye-opener and you can see some of the other things he's done with popular statistics at his website:
It's worth taking a look at.
Before I did any research, I thought about the question and decided ceramic was a better choice out of the two. Then I went online and did some research and found out that both plastic and ceramic can be equally as bad. But in the long run, ceramic is a better alternative.
Whether you're using a styrofoam, plastic, or paper cup, all of them require some amount of energy to manufacture. Contrary to people's perceptions, it takes less amount of energy to produce plastic, styrofoam and paper cups than ceramic cups. Not only does it take fuel to produce the ceramic cups, but it takes even more energy to actually ship the cups to various places and water to wash out the cups for reuse. According to treehugger.com, you would have to use a ceramic cup 640 times before it makes up for the energy used in creating it and equalling a styrofoam cup. For paper/cardboard cups it takes 294 uses before the pros start outweighing the cons.
Even though it takes less energy to produce plastic cups, people don't always recycle them and a lot of the plastic ends up in landfills where they are broken down at very slow rates. Unless you kept your one plastic cup and used it as you would with a ceramic cup, plastic cups would be the way to go. Realistically, plastic cups don't last for that long and break and wear down after even a couple of uses. The rate at which they're thrown away compared to the energy you use to keep, use and maintain a ceramic cup naturally point to ceramic cups as a better option.
Back home, I frequently used ceramic mugs unless there were no more clean mugs and I was too lazy to wash them in which case I took out the plastic cups. I also dropped and broke at least one mug every few months, so I don't know if I'm better off using plastic cups than having to buy new mugs. I've been using plastic, paper, styrofoam and ceramic cups in combination all my life and it's hard to say I'll stick soley to ceramic cups. But try is the keyword.
Plastic cups are a conundrum. They break down SLOWLY in landfills, but QUICKLY in my car. What's the deal here anyway?
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