Aren’t paper cups eco-friendly and from “sustainable” forests?

That’s an interesting question. The millions of trees “harvested” to make paper pulp are planted and nurtured over a 30-year period in places such as Scandinavia, Canada, Germany and Russia. The raw logs are then transported to paper mills before being debarked, chipped, mulched, heat-treated, bleached, rolled, printed and finally lined with a 5% plastic waterproof membrane to form disposable cups. It’s incredible to think that they are then placed in the garbage after 5 minutes of convenience and 99% are ultimately destined for landfill or incineration. As you can imagine this is all environmentally expensive. According to the WWF “the pulp and paper industry is the fourth largest industrial user of energy, consuming 6.4 EJ in 2005 and a significant emitter of greenhouse gas” (source EIA report 2008). Is this really sustainable?