Stir sticks are often overlooked—forgotten at the bottoms of trash cans in coffee shops and office building after a morning run. They’re the coffee industry’s underdog, always there but never fully recognized. Coffee cups have undergone numerous changes to cater to people’s need for coffee to start their day—from white paper cups to paper coffee cups with lids and even personalized disposable coffee cups! There’s always an occasion where coffee can be used. Statistics showing the average American consumer drank 1.64 cups of coffee per day and the average coffee cup being around 9 ounces. Coffee shops have an influx of business at any given moment because 30% of the U.S population occasionally drinks coffee, which means stir sticks are in demand to provide a thoroughly stirred cup of coffee that can wake up even the dullest of faces.
The Importance of Stir Sticks
Stirrers are primarily used for coffee. Specifically, wooden stir sticks for coffee are the most popular type of coffee stirrer used in coffee shops and cafes—but imagine your life without a stirrer to properly distribute cream and sugar to your coffee cup. Doesn’t necessarily seem devastating, right? Now, imagine having to figure out how you’re going to stir your coffee everyday—using a valuable time that could be spent getting to your destination. That might become a significant inconvenience over time because we are such a fast-paced generation, waiting isn’t exactly our forte. The use of stirrers goes far beyond coffee intensive purposes, though. Stir sticks benefit those who are might be rushing through their lunch breaks—hot soup inside a makeshift bowl, a paper cup that aligns with their jammed schedule. Americans are believed to consume more than 10 million bowls of soup each year, which accounts for a lot of stir sticks being used to bridge the gap between a hungry worker and a functional, efficient employee.
How Stir Sticks Impact The Environment
Although stir sticks are beneficial to us, their impact is not so helpful to the environment. Particularly, wooden stir sticks are damaging to the environment, because thousands of trees are cut down to make a small portion of our lives a bit more convenient. Plastic stirrers are much more helpful to the environment, because of their ability to be recycled and converted into something of substance rather than another wasteful product for our convenience. That’s why most major companies are making the change over to plastic materials to bring awareness about the importance of protecting our environment.
