A tempest in a teacup is brewing in Toronto that shows the limits to which common sense can be stretched in aid of a good cause.

In this case the cause is the environment, with the tempest swirling around the ubiquitous Tim’s cup, which it seems is a devil to recycle. Why? Because one part of the cup is paper and the other (the lid) is plastic.

A machine that separates the two is available, but at a steep cost. So Toronto City Hall wants Tim Hortons to take the matter in hand and dissuade customers from using the paper/plastic combo by offering a 20-cent discount for coffee and tea poured into customer-supplied reusable mugs.

Hortons already gives caffeine cravers 10 cents off if they bring their own cup, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to put a lid on the use of the offending cup.

This isn’t only a two-way conversation between Toronto and Tim Hortons. Rather, it’s part of an effort by that city to reduce consumer waste; other fast-food restaurants will also be impacted, as will grocery stores as city council considers a proposal to limit the use of plastic shopping bags by ‘offering’ consumers a discount for not using them.

It seems a great deal of energy is going into finding a complicated solution for a simple problem. Recycling options already exists. Why can’t consumers simply separate lid from cup and put each in the appropriate recycling bin?

And when it comes to plastic shopping bags, why can’t consumers be proactive and use reusable cloth bags instead?

Where’s individual responsibility in this tiresome debate? Talking about protecting the environment is easy – actually doing something a little more difficult.

The goal is defensible: getting hundreds of millions of coffee cups out of landfills and into the recycling stream, and generally reducing the flow of consumer waste, including plastic bags.

And it’s a target that can be met, without undue regulation and enforcement, if we actually lived up to our environmental rhetoric. Sadly, we don’t.

This is not a new tale. All sorts of regulations, processes and fees exist to enforce rules we shouldn’t need to be coerced into respecting. From smoking in public spaces to using cell phones while driving, regulation steps in when basic respect, for others and the environment, fails to step up.

And then the very people who caused the regulation in the first place turn around and complain about over-regulation.  

Be proactive and save the environment and millions of dollars in the process. If not, get used to the processes being developed in the absence of common sense and basic respect.