TOM MILNE
Opinions Writer

This morning, as I stumbled into my local Tim Horton’s for a bagel and coffee, I was hit with the sudden feeling that I had entered into the scene of a David Lynch film.

As I surveyed the scene, I saw tables packed full of customers chatting up a storm, sipping coffee out of mugs, nothing exactly out of the ordinary. And then I saw them: stacks, piles, virtual mountains of paper cups sitting on the tables, pristine aside from the viciously gnawed edges.

The juxtaposition of the coffee-filled ceramic mugs and the barbarically chewed paper cups sent my mind reeling: first, a plane falls out of the sky, now this?

This is truly bizarre. In our age of “green everything” — when taking a shower longer than four minutes places one at the equivalent moral level of the CEO of BP, when people purchase environmentally responsible dog food, when there is a market for handbags made out of recycled pop cans — people are throwing out tens of thousands of unused paper cups every day in order to extract a message that almost invariably informs you that you have failed to win anything.

When you multiply the number of people who eat in at Tim Horton’s each day by the number of locations across North America, the number of cups that are wasted is astounding (approximately 6.3 x 1,011, or enough to reach the planet from Avatar — which, apparently, we give more of a shit about than our own).

The Tim Horton’s line-up has become the proverbial mountain of our time, which pilgrims climb to find the sage who divulges the secret wisdom: “Please play again.”

On their website, Tim Horton’s brags about how their employees volunteer for environmental clean-up initiatives, the vast majority of which are presumably spent picking up unused Timmy’s cups. In their “Sustainability and Responsibility Report Summary,” they state that the company is committed to “reducing the waste we create from all aspects of our business.”

Oh really, Timmy’s? Then why are you dangling the carrot of environmental degradation in front of my caffeine-deprived nose every time I bring my reusable thermos into your establishment? “Are you sure you don’t want a paper cup? You know you could win a car, right?”

All right, maybe I’m exaggerating slightly. But seriously Canada, we can do better than this! We have people walking and biking to work in -50 C wind-chill for environmental reasons and we can’t say no to a paper cup?

The problem here is with Timmy’s. It is unfair to punish the customer by forcing them to choose between sustainability and sweepstakes. It’s fine that we all want to participate in the contest and we should not be punished for making responsible choices. However, is this really the only means available to disseminate prize-winning information?

Perhaps I am missing something here. Maybe the appeal of “Roll up the Rim” is less the excitement of winning a car — or more likely, a honey-glazed cruller — but rather a more existentially fulfilling nature. That is to say, the vast majority of us work hard with our chompers, risking humiliation in front of our peers as we are reduced to our animalistic nature, chewing, clawing with our fingernails, biting, sweating in frustration, but finally opening up that ostensibly impenetrable rim to discover what? “Please play again.”

Is this some kind of cruel joke? No, I argue. Rather, this is the very key to the success of the contest: “Please play again.” When it comes down to it, this is the Sisyphean struggle that countless Canadians risk life and limb — and respectability — by blocking traffic waiting in the 40-car line-up at the Timmy’s drive-through each morning.

The endless throngs of students, patiently waiting in the nausea-inducing lines in the Arts Tunnel at the university are waiting for more than just coffee. They are waiting for a reminder of why we are all here in the first place. The Tim Horton’s line-up has become the proverbial mountain of our time, which pilgrims climb to find the sage who divulges the secret wisdom: “Please play again.”

I understand the impulsive drive to say yes to doing it all again — so yes, please do. But must we receive our fix at the peril of future generations (not to mention our expensive, orthodontically-modified apparatuses)? Could we not encourage the adoption of a rather less absurd means of play, at least for those of us using a mug? Perhaps a scratch card could be optional, or a cardboard card with tear-away strips like Safeway has used.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: there’s a reason no one’s lining up in the streets to play “Touchdown to Win,” because we don’t want the “Safe-Way.” We want a challenge!

Touché, oh brave existential adventurer, and to you I say: you want a challenge? All right, then let’s try to get a company to put its money where its mouth is for once. Next time you go to Tim Horton’s, ask to speak with the manager about offering alternative ways to play for those of us who dine in or prefer to use reusable mugs.

Come on, Canada, this is something really easy we could all do that is infinitely more rewarding than a chewed up paper tab.

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image: Jon Lin, Flickr