I'm sure that you, like me, would like to do more for the environment; would like to have a lower environmental impact.
So you might have wondered: "Well should I be using
paper cups?" It's a good question, and it's one that we're going to look at in a bit more detail.
The paper cup has become something of an icon of the coffee industry, and
when the Americanized version of Italian coffee culture spread around the world and coffee shops became more like fast-food restaurants,
coffee on-the-go really flourished. The old Italian model was really about taking time out of your day and going and having a coffee;
taking a break. But now it was all about coffee
anytime, anywhere. More than that paper
Cups are what allowed this new style of coffee to become financially viable
Coffee shops couldn't survive if they just sold coffee to people sitting inside
Over time cups became expressions of brand and the cup that you held in your hand said something about who you were
There is however a problem
These cups produce a staggering amount of waste tens of thousands of tons
What's confusing is that it seems like they can be recycled some cups even say so
But if you put one into a recycling, bin you pretty much consign it to landfill. Here's the problem a paper
Cup is made of more than just paper
In order to make it waterproof and to stop hot drinks spilling into your lap the inside of a paper
Cup is coated with a thin layer of plastic and in order to recycle the cup
You'd have to separate that plastic from the paper and in the UK only three companies are currently able to do that right now
How bad is the paper cup problem?
Well reports say that we use about two and a half billion paper cups per year, which seems bad
But that is actually only about not 0.1% of total UK waste and only about not 0.7
Percent of total UK packaging waste in some ways not as bad as it looks
But definitely a problem, and these cups are also a very visible problem when they're left and littered
Now in the UK the government is proposing what it's calling a lot a levy a 25 P charge on any takeaway
Cups this is off the back of supermarkets charging for single-use plastic bags data from retailers shows that just over half a billion
Banks were used in the first six months after the charge was introduced a drop of around 90%
Now I'm not a fan of this proposal because I believe it's too high attacks. It's charged at the wrong time and
It sort of treats coffee demanders inelastic, and I think in truth it would have a massive
negative impact on coffee shops
So let's look at some alternatives and the first and most obvious one would be the porcelain
Cup is this better well
Obviously yes in 1994 a study was published by Hawking that looked at the number of times
You'd have to use a porcelain cup before it was better than a paper cup and it took into account the energy of
Manufacture as well as things like how much energy it took to wash the cup each time you used it
And you'd need to use a cup like this at least 50 times
That number goes up quite a lot depending on how it's washed if a dishwasher is inefficient or only
Half-full that numbered leaps up quite dramatically in fact his calculations showed that the energy it took to wash a porcelain cup
Was almost identical to the energy required to make a Styrofoam cup and then we have
Reusable cups now companies like KeepCup and others have really exploded in the last few years
They're very very very popular and keep cup themselves say that you would need to use their cup
15 times before it's better than a paper. Cup, which seems pretty doable however
They're not without their drawbacks first
There's often complain that customers hand them over still dirty from the usage before and expect them to clean it that's not OK
Secondly it can be a challenge for a coffee shop to fill appropriately a random sized reusable cup
Sure some of these are demarcated at 8 or 12 ounces
But some of them may not be do you only accept cups if they have accurate volumetric lines on them?
How do you fill 8 ounces of liquid in a 10 or 12 or 13 ounce random reusable cup?
annoying little questions for cafe to answer and then we have
Biodegradable x' now there's still not a ton of information out there about them. There are however a couple of concerns
One the energy required to manufacture them is much higher and secondly they typically require specific
Pathways of disposal in order to properly break down just throwing one into your garden compost won't necessarily mean
It'll break down and naturally degrade so a little bit like paper
Cups you need to dispose of them properly in order to have a lower environmental impact
in summary our paper cups bad
Well yes
But if all we're gonna do is switch our paper cups out for porcelain cups or reusable cups and not make any wider effort in
our day-to-day lives
Then we're pretty much wasting our time
Maybe it should just be a symbol of a much wider effort that we make in our personal lives. It's a good start
We've got a lot more to do