[image from Sundance]

Why get a disposable cup — created of oil that took millions of years to form, and made of plastic that’ll last hundreds of years — when you’re only going to use it for a half hour or so?

“Paper or Plastic?,” the latest episode of Sundance’s 14-week series called The Green, addresses our disposable culture — and alternatives to it via the Cradle to Cradle concept — making sure that all components of a product are either safely returned to nature or reused in making new products.

We see pretty biodegradable fabric and recyclable chairs already on the market; we even see a partially biodegradable hydrogen-powered car, Model U by Ford — though it’s unclear when Model U’ll actually hit the market, if ever.

Once we get to the more disposable stuff, however, the cradle to cradle concept can get fuzzy. The episode takes us into a biodegradable plastic factory, showing us the process of making disposable cups and takeout containers from corn. However, we also get an alarming stat: In the last 25 years, cups and plates disposal’s gone from 190,000 to 930,000 tons. How much corn would we have to grow to make 930,000 tons of bioplastics — all for cups and plates that’ll be thrown away in minutes?

This is the type of question cradle-to-cradle people are asking, even as they help create “transitional” products — Products that may not be perfect, but will be instrumental in helping to move us towards a less disposable culture. The bioplastics guy, for one, says that his work is just “a small part of a big puzzle” –

“Paper or Plastic?” airs on the Sundance channel tomorrow, Tuesday, June 19, at 9 pm. Don’t have cable? You can download the episodes via iTunes.

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