How the Dixie Cup Saved the Day (BIG TIME!)

From Susan’s NEWEST Book: American Fun Foods

As cute and lovely as Dixie Cup ice cream seems, they were also, quite literally, life savers. The story starts with Lawrence Luellen of Boston who invented the first paper cup in 1908. The cup would replace “tin dippers,” alongside free water stands or “public water vessels,” located in public buildings, railroad stations and schools. Legends of thirsty men, women and children drank from the communal dippers which no one bothered washing, essentially a happy home for germs of all varieties and an effective spreader of death and disease. If that wasn’t bad enough ice cream vendors would sell a small cup of ice cream to kids who would literally lick it clean, and hand it back, where it was refilled and handed to the next in line.

Dixie Cups were different. They were not made to last. As the Smithsonian Magazine put it, the life of a Dixie Cup entailed, “Drink. Toss. Repeat.” Tin dippers out. Disposable cups in. Death and disease gone. Then in 1923, the company started making hygienic 2-1/2 inch ice cream cups that sold, like other candies and ice creams of the time, for a nickel ushering in Eat. Lick. Toss. A boon for everyone. ⁴⁶

Last word: The Dixie Cup model of Drink. Toss. Repeat. was the first of an avalanche of disposable items – and environmental liabilities – such as pens, razors, and water bottles.