The disposable paper cup came to prominence during the 1918 influenza pandemic as a hygienic option to avoid spreading germs at drinking fountains. But now it's come to symbolise everything destructive about 20th century culture, and may itself be tossed on the scrap heap.

At the beginning of the twentieth century advances in medical research were providing the public with a growing awareness of how diseases were transmitted. 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.

Here, a single glass or metal cup might be shared by hundreds of different people. 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.

With the burgeoning fashion for takeaway drinking, it is therefore not surprising to learn that the simple paper cup is responsible for the felling of over 6 million trees a year in America alone.

The cup was a simple thing made from a cylinder of plain paper wrapped around a disc of paper as its bottom. Paraffin, a waxy by-product of petroleum, was used to make the paper waterproof. 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.

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. Commercial premises ordered the water and cup dispenser in much the same way as water coolers are ordered today. The cup itself was originally marketed as the Health Kup (the cup spelled with a K to inject it with some marketing zip and to indicate that this cup was your friend) although it was renamed the Dixie Cup in 1919 after a popular range of cute dolls. (The origin of the word Dixie is obscure, ranging from a slang term for a ten dollar bill in Louisiana to the common name in the nineteenth century for the Mason-Dixon Line which divided the states that used slaves from those that didn't).

Although the original cup was tiny -- big enough only for a gulp or two of water -- the basic design has changed little since then. The overall shape remained constant whatever the size, with the same rolled lip adding a touch of structural reinforcement as well as making it more pleasant to drink from. Manufactured in several variations, including a double-skinned version that helps insulate hot drinks, it is often thought of as an eco-friendly design due to its paper content. Most cups, however, are lined with either wax or polyethylene which stops the paper from getting soggy but makes it difficult to recycle. With the burgeoning fashion for takeaway drinking, it is therefore not surprising to learn that the simple paper cup is responsible for the felling of over 6 million trees a year in America alone. And while we may well be drinking more hygienically, it's a reminder that the simplest designs can have a huge global impact.

The invention of the Styrofoam cup in 1960s created a new buzz, outdoing the simple paper cup until people caught on that it couldn't be recycled. Scares about Styrofoam's potential link to carcinogens have also caused customers to turn back to the paper cup. In recent years, however, multi-use ceramic, steel and silicone takeaway cups have become popular and it's charming to see how often they replicate the shape of Lawrence Luellen's design of a hundred years ago.

While this humble paper cup stands as a symbol of the historic change in infection awareness, it also heralded a major change in human behaviour: the throwaway culture. With growing environmental concerns, it's interesting to consider whether other disposable items such as razors, cheap pens and even chopsticks will also go the way of the paper cup, being replaced by sturdier, long-lasting, multi-use versions. A kind of circular design evolution, in other words. Who could believe that a simple paper cup might symbolise so much?