One place I like to frequent has adopted a green, eco-friendly attitude, and has started to transition to using paper goods that are described as being good for the environment. Apparently, their coffee cups are manufactured using recycled paper and are designed for rapid biodegradability.

So rapid, in fact, that the cups begins to biodegrade with your coffee still in it. Apparently, if you don't drink your coffee fast enough, it starts to seep out along the seam of the cup, and I have actually seen puddles of coffee growing under a cup.

Because of this, people have started to use *two* cups instead of just one cup, the outer cup to catch the coffee leaking out of th einner cup. In other words, providing a "green alternative" cup increases the tendency to use twice as much paper, a result that is probably the opposite of what they are attempting to achieve.

This is, in fact, a good example where attempting to optimize for one desired objective (biodegradability) leads to pessimization along other desired objectives (paper use).