What's eating the McDonald's Cup?

Having a blog entry on this subject does make me think that I need to take up a cause; world peace, famine, save the whales. Don't get me wrong, I'm a supporter of helping all of those causes, but there's some issues we need to overcome that are out of my hands before it can happen.

Peace - going to be tough until at least one God appears or the LHC proves a lack thereof.

Famine/Malaria/HIV/Third World Poverty - end those and then what do we do with the extra billion odd people on the planet? We struggle to have enough resources for the ones we already have. We need to work out how we can sustain the extra people first without further detriment to the planet.

Save the Whales - How hard can it be to just not kill them anymore? **coughJapancough** Anyone that has read Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy would also feel the same way about dolphins. In addition, included in this list should be seals, polar bears, grizzly bears, orangutans, panda bears, giant squids (yes you heard me, giant squids), tigers, lions, sharks, crocodiles, elephants, cheetahs - you know what, just leave the wild animals and their habitat alone. We have a lot to learn from them.

See section on Famine/Malaria/HIV/Third World Poverty which means you can't support both. Solve Famine/Malaria/HIV/Third World Poverty = bad news for the animals. Where else are you going to put the extra people, their houses, the power plants to run them, the crops to feed them? Wipe out more habitat. It's a lose/lose situation.

So I sponsor WSPA in the hope that I can at least help to stop stupid humans from being unbelievably cruel to animals. It was the only plight that didn't send my head into a spin.

This started as an entry about McDonald's. "Hypocrite, you eat McDonalds!!" I hear a few of you/or no one say after mentioning to be good to animals and not damage the planet further.

So what is eating the McDonald's cup?

This may be localised to Australia, but has anyone else noticed that if you leave a McDonald's cup with Coke around for an extended period of time, such as overnight, that the bottom gets eaten out and next thing you know you are using half a box of tissues trying to suck up the coke from the cup holder in your car?

I worked at McDonald's as a youngen for 5 years. On occassions I saw many a Macca's cup sit around for quite some time with no obvious leakage or eating away at the waxy coating. So it had me thinking, has the quality of the cup decreased or has the Coke become more deadly?

Previously Coke was more notoriously known for being able to eat through teeth, a T-bone steak, coins, just to name a few but it seems that Mythbusters put a stop to those old wives tales.

Now that it is eating through my McDonald's cup perhaps this needs to be re-opened for debate. And did Mythbusters think to test the K-Way version of Coke? If the mix of Coke syrup to Soda Water is not correct, does it then posses cup eating properties?

Maybe I should write into them and ask?

There are some other factors that may require some looking into:
1. Does a constant temperature vs a fluctuating temperature in the car effect the composition of the cup material?
2. Does this happen with Fanta?
3. Does the volume of liquid remaining in the cup have a direct correlation to the time it takes to reach that weakness point?
4. I only buy a Small size, but is the same happening for Medium and Large?

I need to start thinking about more important things.