Commercial premises ordered the water and cup dispenser in much the same way as water coolers are ordered today. The idea of using a paper cup quickly gained popularity, especially following the influenza pandemic of 1918 which wiped out an estimated 5 per cent of the world's population, at least 675,000 of them American. Evangelical in his drive for disease prevention and backed by businessman Hugh Moore, he formed the Individual Drinking Cup Company of New York and carried out a widespread campaign to educate people on the dangers of sharing drinking vessels. Paraffin, a waxy by-product of petroleum, was used to make the paper waterproof. The cup was a simple thing made from a cylinder of plain paper wrapped around a disc of paper as its bottom. Luellen came up with the idea of a placing a paper cup dispenser beside a water cooler so that the drinking utensil could be thrown away after the water had been drunk. Here, a single glass or metal cup might be shared by hundreds of different people. In America in 1907, a lawyer called Lawrence Luellen was worried that one of the worst culprits in spreading germs was the humble public drinking fountain, many of which were installed in schools, office buildings and railways stations. But now it's come to symbolise everything destructive about 20th century culture, and may itself be tossed on the scrap heap.Īt the beginning of the twentieth century advances in medical research were providing the public with a growing awareness of how diseases were transmitted. The disposable paper cup came to prominence during the 1918 influenza pandemic as a hygienic option to avoid spreading germs at drinking fountains. Paper cups were launched as a hygiene product that would protect against the spread of germs, but have since come to be viewed as a symbol of consumer wastefulness.
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