Post-COVID Sustainability Concepts — It’s (Yes, Finally) Time To Toss The Penny (And All Coins?)
If you ask anyone what they learned during COVID, odds are most people would say, “wash your hands, don’t touch your face.” Two good, solid takeaways that can help prevent the spread of disease and are good general practice for life during COVID and post-COVID (if that is a reality anytime soon or not is a topic for others).
What about — “don’t use coins?” With all of the focus on hand sanitizer, wouldn’t it just be good to get to a place where we just touch less stuff? Especially things like plastic, on which COVID can live longer than any other surface (up to 9 days!). But metals, which provide a 4–5 day life for COVID to hang out on, are something we touch a lot — especially if we use coins for transactions.
It’s a pretty open and shut case from a public health perspective: passing coins around is just not smart!
We have known for a long time that pennies cost taxpayers more than they are worth. A study in 2014 found it cost us 1.66 cents to make each cent. Hmm. Another in 2016 found it cost 1.43. Even an MBA student from Trump University could probably (mmm, probablyyyy?) tell you that that’s not a good investment. So, okay, open and shut case on the financial side.
What about the ecological footprint? The same research from the Smithsonian Magazine article linked above found that:
- In 2014, the Mint made more than 8 billion f**king pennies. This used more than 21,000 tons of zinc and more than 560 tons of copper.
- 86% of all copper mined and used for consumer products in 2014 was for F**KING COINS.
- “Not a single penny made today is recycled.”
- Roughly 167,000 gigajoules of energy was required to make these STUPID F**KING COINS. That’s roughly 46.4 million kilowatt-hours, enough to drive a Tesla 200,000,000 miles.
- There was no estimate of how much water was used or pollution released, but you can be sure, they’re both substantial.
Open and shut case on the ecological side.
And if you need any more motivation, consider that COVID has actually already interrupted the coin supply and people are moving away from cash entirely because, as pundits guess, people don’t want to touch coins anymore! Society is already moving toward being cash-less.
How about it folks? How do we make our society safer, less corrupt, and slow global climate disruption all at the same time? Call your congressperson and demand an end to F**King pennies. And then the other coins, too.
I made my first petition on Change.org, so if you’re into it, please sign here!
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