Cup of truth
For a small structure standing nine centimeters tall and typically holding eight ounces of liquid, the average paper coffee cup has done a great job of hitting news headlines for all the wrong reasons.
On 30 May, more than 750,000 viewers tuned in to watch the ABC series War on Waste, hosted by The Chaser’s Craig Reucassel. Craig rode around the streets of Melbourne on a decorated coffee cup tram, echoing “BYO coffee cup” to those sipping their brew out of a takeaway cup, and saluting those who held a reusable cup.
The show explored the impact paper coffee cups are having on our environment, and made the statement that an estimated 50,000 coffee cups are sent to landfill every half hour because they can’t be recycled in Australia, even if disposed in the recyclables that are transported to a Material Recovery Facility (MRF). MRFs are responsible for separating materials into paper, glass, metals and plastics, and then forwarding these materials to downstream processors and recyclers such as paper mills.
What followed was a flood of conversation, confusion and questions from consumers, café owners, cup manufacturers, councils and industry members about the impact of our paper coffee cup addiction. The big question remains: are paper coffee cups recyclable or not? The answer, it seems, depends on who you ask.
According to BioPak, its BioCups are “definitely recyclable” because unlike regular plastic-coated paper, its polylactide acid (PLA) bioplastic coating is made from renewable resources that dissolve in the paper repulping process.
Manny Manatakis, Cleanaway’s National Sustainability Solution Specialist says the plastic film on traditional disposable coffee cups is typically skimmed or filtered by batch digester-processing paper mills.
Some authorities say disposable cups can’t be recycled because the plastic lining is difficult to extract from the paper during repulping, while others say it’s a matter of cost, labour, machine inadequacy, and food contamination.
BENEATH THE SURFACE
According to The Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), it is estimated that around
