11 ms·

Better disposable coffee cups can be made with waste from sugar cane

153 points by jkuria 6y ago

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
> she estimates that cups made from the new material would cost $2,333 a tonne. That is half the $4,750 a tonne cost of biodegradable cups made from polylactic acid (fermented plant starch), and only slightly more than the $2,177 a tonne that it takes to make plastic cups. There you go. The dagger for non-biodegradable plastics come not just from invention, but from invention and value. ~7% increase in price is enough to disrupt.
ahmadss 6y ago
id love to see this for single use containers like the ones they use to ship strawberries, etc.
Hnaomyiph 6y ago
https://outline.com/d3HG9V https://outline.com/d3HG9V
ahmadss 6y ago
free version of the findings -- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201112113139.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201112113139.h...
esturk 6y ago
This would be great for coffee chains. Some people think that when you bring you own cup to Starbucks, it'll save a paper cup. This is actually not true. The barista has to use pour the coffee to a new cup and then they'll pour in on yours.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sfifs 6y ago
  Almost all paper nowadays is made from managed forests (ie. Plantations) and paper is perfectly bio-degradable. So I'm not sure why it's a big problem. I use a mug because the 50c off pays off within a month and the mug keeps the coffee warm longer than the paper cup and no, the barista pours my coffee directly into the mug
  - adchari 6y ago
    The issue isn’t really the paper (although one can argue that any single use item isn’t ideal), paper coffee cups contain a thin layer of plastic on the inside to prevent leaking, which prevents them from being easily recycled or biodegrading naturally (which also isn’t possible in a landfill). A minority of recycling plants actually has the capability to separate the paper from the plastic, but this is not time or cost efficient and so it’s easier to just throw it out. Also, some places do brew or mix in a paper cup first, some will brew directly into your cup.
    - Steve44 6y ago
      In the UK we have the capability[1][2] to recycle all the traditional PE lined coffee cups we use here. There are also quite a few collection services[3][4]. One of the challenges is separating the waste ready for recycling so having collection points in cafes, offices, and railway stations[5] is a really good start. There are also some new cups with reduce the amount of plastic in a cup so that it's below the 5% contamination level fr general paper recycling. Personally I think this is not a solution as it's just gaming the system buy encouraging contamination of the waste stream. [1] https://www.dssmith.com/recycling/insights/case-studies/case-study-solving-the-coffee-cup-recycling-challenge https://www.dssmith.com/recycling/insights/case-studies/case... [2] https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/james-cropper-paper-mill-forge-recycling-recycle-coffee-cups/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/james-cropper-paper-m... [3] https://thefirstmile.co.uk/service/coffee-cup-recycling https://thefirstmile.co.uk/service/coffee-cup-recycling [4] https://www.veolia.co.uk/services/coffee-cup-recycling https://www.veolia.co.uk/services/coffee-cup-recycling [5] https://www.networkrail.co.uk/news/network-rail-introduces-coffee-cup-recycling-passengers-encouraged-to-sip-save-and-recycle-to-help-make-stations-greener/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/news/network-rail-introduces-c...
- viraptor 6y ago
  Is that a Starbucks / state / US rule? In Australian cafes they make the coffee straight in your reusable cup.
  - repiret 6y ago
    It's a Starbucks rules. Most non-chain US coffee shops will happily put the drink straight into your own mug.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  This is definitely not true for most coffee chains in the UK (I haven't actually been to starbucks recently). I've watched them make the coffee straight into my cup.
- jrootabega 6y ago
  It would be kinda insane right now for a barista even to handle any customer's cup, let alone put it down on the counters and machines, where it could touch the spouts and pitchers and whatnot. And to be honest, it still makes sense even without a pandemic, even if the stakes aren't as high. E. coli will always be around.
bash-j 6y ago
How is this different to the already widely available bamboo or sugar cane single use containers?
Animats 6y ago
Bagasse is widely used for making paper plates, clamshell containers, and other disposables.[1] Cheap, biodegradeable, and non-toxic. What's new here? Smoother texture, perhaps? [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Disposable-bagasse-biodegradable-3-chamber-board_1600061819758.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Disposable-bagasse-bi...
- klyrs 6y ago
  Bagasse is short fibers that absorb water and oil readily. Adding longer bamboo fibers seems to increase tolerance for both. The stuff that's out there now wouldn't hold near-boiling water for a minute much less 2 hours, which is their claim.
  - Kankuro 6y ago
    The temperuture of the coffee will drop quickly, so I wonder if it would not resist to water consistently heaten for 2 hours or if it will fall apart after 2 hours if it contained hot water (that would be bad if you forgot your coffee on your desk).
    - Steve44 6y ago
      The current PE lined cups will also leak after some time. They are designed for immediate use, not as liquid storage containers. Most of them, especially the higher quality ones, will usually last a day or two before significantly leaking but not always. Don't leave one on your desk overnight, I've seen the messy results!
  - Animats 6y ago
    Bagasse is a long-fiber material, but the usual process for extracting sugar (wire brushes, crushing) leaves you with more of a powder. Longer fibers can be extracted, oriented, and used to make oriented strand board, which is like particleboard but with more tensile strength. Here's some research in Brazil on that.[1] Brazil being the world's largest produce of sugar cane residue, they have plenty of raw material to work with. Probably good for making IKEA-type furniture even more cheaply. [1] http://article.sapub.org/pdf/10.5923.j.ijme.20120204.04.pdf http://article.sapub.org/pdf/10.5923.j.ijme.20120204.04.pdf
reactspa 6y ago
If anyone who's reading this has PM Modi's ear, please forward this to him. He loves promoting news such as this.
teilo 6y ago
If this can eliminate paper coffee cups with leaking seams, I'm all for it.
markvdb 6y ago
From the article: "Once used, these could be dumped in landfills with a clear conscience." Naturally biodegradable waste is not landfill material. A well-informed reporter not realising that shows how much work there still is to do. The EU single use plastic ban [0] is coming in July 20201. Is there any US equivalent yet? [0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190321IPR32111/parliament-seals-ban-on-throwaway-plastics-by-2021 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190321IP...
- ikiris 6y ago
  Yeah Trump banned biodegradable alternatives, and made a coal subsidy.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Dumps are anaerobic, so I'm not sure anything is biodegradable once earth is layered on top of it. My understanding is that once something goes into a landfill, it's there for a thousand years or more.
- Steve44 6y ago
  The EU 1999 Landfill Directive is about the phase-out of biodegradable waste going to landfill. Nothing which composts or biodegrades should be disposed of this way. These cups should not go in this waste stream, the only end of life is commercial composting as I don't believe they are suitable for home composting. https://www.ciwm.co.uk/ciwm/knowledge/landfill-directive.aspx https://www.ciwm.co.uk/ciwm/knowledge/landfill-directive.asp...
- INTPenis 6y ago
  This always irked me about my wonderful doggie poop bags. For 3 years I've been using Earth Rated bags made out of corn starch but they go into the same bin as all the plastic poop bags. So they literally drown in a sea of plastic because I don't want to just leave them by the road.
  - Steve44 6y ago
djrogers 6y ago
> They also found that when they made a cup out of the stuff and filled it with water heated almost to boiling point, the cup remained intact for more than two hours. Though this is not as long as a plastic cup would last (it would survive indefinitely) it is long enough for all practical purposes. Err, no. A disposable cup that leaks after 2 hours is a horrible product. Disposable cups are at their most useful in the car, and it’s easy for a bit of coffee to be left in a cup for more than a couple of hours.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  That's a good point, but the world goes through something like half a trillion disposable cups per year. Even if 99% of them are used exclusively to store hot liquids in cars for over two hours, that still leaves 5 billion cups per year that we could usefully replace with these.
  - dorgo 6y ago
    Just a little overhead of deciding which type of cup you want and to not forget to keep the melting one out of your car.
    - christophilus 6y ago
      Someone mentioned a silicone sleeve in the cup holder would be a fine solution to this.
- seszett 6y ago
  To me, drinking in a car is a very American thing and I don't think this would be a problem here. If this product works in most of the world but not the US, it would still be better than using plastic cups everywhere. Although paper cups are already common anyway.
  - dawnerd 6y ago
    People drink in their car all over the world, what makes it "very American"?
disposablex 6y ago
Always love these disposable avenues of eating and drinking. Not sure if it started after seeing willy wonka eating a cup[0] he just drink out of or not. But I always remember reading an article about Indian food-carts serving tea in the morning[1][2]. They make really thin clay cups to serve it in. When you're done you smash the cup on the road when you're done. [0] https://twitter.com/omgfacts/status/885198079401631745?lang=en https://twitter.com/omgfacts/status/885198079401631745?lang=... [1] https://vedicmix.com/drink-your-chai-and-break-your-cup/ https://vedicmix.com/drink-your-chai-and-break-your-cup/ [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2016/10/26/kolkatas-age-old-tradition-of-bhar-clay-cups-of-tea/ https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2016/10/26/kolkatas-age-ol...
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
  Clay is a non-renewable resource.
  - sgerenser 6y ago
    Clay itself is essentially unlimited... there’s so much of it and it’s constantly being reformed (although on a much slower time scale than, say, wood). However the energy used to fire it might be more of a problem.
- Steve44 6y ago
  > When you're done you smash the cup on the road when you're done. Why would you ever want to encourage people to litter. We need to encourage people to be responsible and dispose of their waste correctly.
  - disposablex 6y ago
    You act like I invented the custom. I don't encourage or condone littering but if you've even glanced at the pages from the links it indirectly addresses that. Also it's much better than the alternative of non-biodegradable plastics. > Because the shards were unglazed, the cup would simply dissolve over time in the rain and sun, and from the friction of peoples feet walking over it > No one know how long the tradition of environmentally friendly clay cups can resist the onslaught of cheap plastic. > But plastic [is] rapidly replac[ing] the clay.
paulintrognon 6y ago
Disposable items should be one of our most wanted enemies. What about reusable cups like mugs? You should then be expected to BYOC everywhere. Yes that would mean a lot of education and changes of mentallities and that's not going to happen anytime soon unless we pass laws for that kind of thing. And we totally should, IMHO. (edit: removed the part in which I stated that burning bagasse is clean energy as I want the discussion to be focused on my first point)
- hannob 6y ago
  Observation from Germany: A couple of years ago I wouldn't bring my own cup, because I was uncomfortable with having conversations about it. This has changed, because it's now prevalent enough that I'd consider it "not unusual" to have my own cup. Also plenty of places now offer small discounts. I'm not doing it for the discounts, but that of course adds to the normalization. (Also: Covid makes things more complicated and I've been wary of using my reusable cup once again, though I also massively reduced my coffee-not-at-home-consumption, and after all that'll be over at some point.)
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    I don't think reusable cups are an isuse with covid. After all it's your cup. And the baristas will have to touch disposable one too. So long as you wash it I guess.
    - dmurray 6y ago
      Reusable cups allow the customer to contaminate the barista, as well as the other way around, so it's an extra avenue for infection - and a more dangerous one, since he's going to be serving coffee to hundreds more customers and does not get disinfected between each customer. Coffee shops here in Ireland stopped accepting reusable cups during 2020.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Where does this end? I could also bring my own silverware, my own plate and bowl, my own cloth napkin. “Hey, we’re going to get some soup and go for walk; wanna come?” “Sorry, I can’t, I thought I was going to have a salad and so I only brought my salad plates and utensils with me.” I think it’s fairly unreasonable to expect people to lug around everything they might need for the day every day.
benrr 6y ago
If single-use cups are still going to be around, I’d much rather it be in this form than its current. Having said that, we need a culture shift back to reusable products. I can’t help but feel like the tech industry is guilty of perpetuating a mindset of just throwing things away and getting a new thing without understanding the consequences.
xchaotic 6y ago
A reusable cup is still higher quality and more eco, right?
Puts 6y ago
I remember as a kid in the 90s there was coffee mugs made of potato starch. It was said you could even eat the mug itself if you wanted to. Wonder what happened to those?
- intricatedetail 6y ago
  All got eaten?
- Steve44 6y ago
  KFC trialled an edible cup in 2015 here in the UK. I don't think it took off, more of a gimmick in this form but quite an interesting experiment. https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/25/kfc-unveils-the-uks-first-edible-coffee-cup-the-scoff-ee-cup-geddit-5078253/ https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/25/kfc-unveils-the-uks-first-edi...
intricatedetail 6y ago
Has anyone successfuly quit coffee? I quit cigarettes, alcohol but tried many times to quit coffee and just can't. I feel so terrible it feels it gets worse every day I don't drink, then a little cup of espresso fixes everything.
- Roritharr 6y ago
  It took me 4 days of headaches but afterwards I had no symptoms. My friend group did a challenge to go without caffeine for 30 days. Everyone made it. My "trick" was to treat the withdrawal symptoms like I was coming off of heroine, visualize a clear improvement after the slump. The rest was just to find caffeine free replacements. Coke Zero Caffeine-Free was a blessing.
- BossingAround 6y ago
  > Has anyone successfuly quit coffee? Sure. I assume you tried to go cold turkey on coffee, and didn't like it. I'd suggest the gradual method, which might work better for you. Over the span of a week, normalize your coffee intake. Have just two cups of coffee a day at a regular time with known quantity of coffee. Next week, reduce the amount of coffee in one cup by 1/2. So, if you grind 30g of coffee, grind 15g. The week after that, reduce the amount of coffee in the other cup to the same amount. The week after that, reduce the amount of coffee in one cup by 1/4 (or, eliminate entirely). One week after that, do the same to the other cup. Before you know it, going cold turkey gives you no symptoms. You can see how this goes on. Adjust the time period and/or the coffee reduction to whatever works for you. For me, a week and coffee reduction by 1/4th (of the original amount) worked just fine for me.
- andromeduck 6y ago
  It's like diet coke, you can either gradually wean off over a few months or take a few weeks off work and just bite the bullet.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  It typically takes me 2-3 weeks to not miss it. And that's after tapering down consumption. It's definitely doable.
contingencies 6y ago
Currently purchasing a full plastics thermoforming line. Not a chemist, but AFAIK current market available 'biostarch polymers' (AFAIK always PLA; which may be marketed as made from corn, sugar cane, etc.) are actually extremely environmentally unfriendly because of the massive embodied energy required to create the industry-ready polymer from the bio-waste material. Their single benefit is nominal biodegradability. It is far better for the environment if single use plastics are just minimized, for example by re-using all containers in your supply chain. This has therefore been our focus. For the last mile to the consumer, however, it's unfortunate that people are now used to disposables, so it's likely going to take a technology shift like Dr. Zhu's or an improved form of traditional techniques such as palm leaf wrapping (common in South and Southeast Asia) or single-use clay pottery (India) to improve the situation. Our company have been considering sponsoring an open robotics challenge in this space (commercially viable deployments of traditional palm leaf wrapping). If anyone would like to co-sponsor, get in touch.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  That's surprising, I'd have assumed there's a bunch of embodied energy in clay pottery too. I'd certainly have felt more guilty throwing away a single use pottery cup than one made of paper. It's frustrating how counter intuitive a lot of environmental issues are.
  - m463 6y ago
    I'm sure things get twisted around like plastic recycling. This is sort of how it seems to me sometimes: https://www.theonion.com/geologists-we-may-be-slowly-running-out-of-rocks-1819571484 https://www.theonion.com/geologists-we-may-be-slowly-running...
- nicoburns 6y ago
  It won't necessarily take a technology shift. Single-use containers could also be legislated against. And the reverse supply chains to get containers back to producers put in place.
  - 6y ago
baybal2 6y ago
There is no so much "waste" left from sugar cane. The bagasse is already used as free fuel to boil cane juice. Only places where electricity, or natural gas is really, really cheap have surplus bagasse.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- guillem_lefait 6y ago
  I'm living in Martinique where there is an important rhum industrie. Another common use of bagasse is compost.
seanwilson 6y ago
How about incentivise every coffee place to serve in standard sizes and accept reusable cups from each other where either you can ask for your cup to be filled up or replaced with a similar clean one for a big customer discount? Something similar to returning the glass bottle the fizzy drink came in for a deposit.
- christophilus 6y ago
  You’d have to solve the sanitization problem. Local growler pubs seem to have solved this pretty well, though.
- arnarbi 6y ago
  Here is one of my favorite things: https://us.huskee.co/swap/ https://us.huskee.co/swap/ Plus the cups look and feel really nice.
crazygringo 6y ago
The article isn't clear at all on how this compares to existing paper cups. Papers cups basically all have a wax coating on the inside so they don't absorb your coffee. Otherwise they'd obviously get soaked pretty much immediately. And wax is biodegradable. Has anything prevented a waxed bagasse cup from being made before? Does the bagasse+bamboo combo still require wax, or is the advantage that it doesn't? And if the bagasse is already being fully utilized as fuel, is this really going to be an environmental benefit? What will the sugar processing plants use as fuel instead? If it's oil (or coal), would this wind up being worse for the environment overall? Technically this is interesting... it's just very unclear to me whether it's a good idea.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > And if the bagasse is already being fully utilized as fuel, is this really going to be an environmental benefit? What will the sugar processing plants use as fuel instead? If it's oil (or coal), would this wind up being worse for the environment overall? It will turn into a new cotton, or biofuel corn. Environmentalist laws often have counterintuitive consequences. Very often, new "technical" plants outprice food crops.
- MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  Sugar processing plants have far more bagasse than they can ever use. My father and great grandfather both worked at sugar mills in Louisiana. Most bagasse sits in gigantic piles that need to be constantly soaked with water (we're talking about a 10,000 ton pile of sugar-enriched fermentable plant matter sitting in the sun during a tropical summer) until it is harvested by companies that make particle board.
- Fej 6y ago
  Many cups which appear wax-coated are in fact coated with plastic.
switch007 6y ago
Has the 'overton window' of coffee consumption shrunk so completely as to exclude the European way of drinking coffee? Why can't we just walk up to a bar, order a coffee, have it served in a ceramic cup? I guess the majority of coffee shops not actually having a bar is a bit of a hindrance!
redvenom 6y ago
We should eliminate single-use items like coffee cups altogether.

153 points by jkuria 6y ago

> she estimates that cups made from the new material would cost $2,333 a tonne. That is half the $4,750 a tonne cost of biodegradable cups made from polylactic acid (fermented plant starch), and only slightly more than the $2,177 a tonne that it takes to make plastic cups. There you go. The dagger for non-biodegradable plastics come not just from invention, but from invention and value. ~7% increase in price is enough to disrupt.

ahmadss 6y ago

id love to see this for single use containers like the ones they use to ship strawberries, etc.

Hnaomyiph 6y ago

https://outline.com/d3HG9V https://outline.com/d3HG9V

ahmadss 6y ago

free version of the findings -- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201112113139.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/11/201112113139.h...

esturk 6y ago

This would be great for coffee chains. Some people think that when you bring you own cup to Starbucks, it'll save a paper cup. This is actually not true. The barista has to use pour the coffee to a new cup and then they'll pour in on yours.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
sfifs 6y ago
Almost all paper nowadays is made from managed forests (ie. Plantations) and paper is perfectly bio-degradable. So I'm not sure why it's a big problem. I use a mug because the 50c off pays off within a month and the mug keeps the coffee warm longer than the paper cup and no, the barista pours my coffee directly into the mug
- adchari 6y ago
  The issue isn’t really the paper (although one can argue that any single use item isn’t ideal), paper coffee cups contain a thin layer of plastic on the inside to prevent leaking, which prevents them from being easily recycled or biodegrading naturally (which also isn’t possible in a landfill). A minority of recycling plants actually has the capability to separate the paper from the plastic, but this is not time or cost efficient and so it’s easier to just throw it out. Also, some places do brew or mix in a paper cup first, some will brew directly into your cup.
  - Steve44 6y ago
    In the UK we have the capability[1][2] to recycle all the traditional PE lined coffee cups we use here. There are also quite a few collection services[3][4]. One of the challenges is separating the waste ready for recycling so having collection points in cafes, offices, and railway stations[5] is a really good start. There are also some new cups with reduce the amount of plastic in a cup so that it's below the 5% contamination level fr general paper recycling. Personally I think this is not a solution as it's just gaming the system buy encouraging contamination of the waste stream. [1] https://www.dssmith.com/recycling/insights/case-studies/case-study-solving-the-coffee-cup-recycling-challenge https://www.dssmith.com/recycling/insights/case-studies/case... [2] https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/james-cropper-paper-mill-forge-recycling-recycle-coffee-cups/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/james-cropper-paper-m... [3] https://thefirstmile.co.uk/service/coffee-cup-recycling https://thefirstmile.co.uk/service/coffee-cup-recycling [4] https://www.veolia.co.uk/services/coffee-cup-recycling https://www.veolia.co.uk/services/coffee-cup-recycling [5] https://www.networkrail.co.uk/news/network-rail-introduces-coffee-cup-recycling-passengers-encouraged-to-sip-save-and-recycle-to-help-make-stations-greener/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/news/network-rail-introduces-c...
viraptor 6y ago
Is that a Starbucks / state / US rule? In Australian cafes they make the coffee straight in your reusable cup.
- repiret 6y ago
  It's a Starbucks rules. Most non-chain US coffee shops will happily put the drink straight into your own mug.
nicoburns 6y ago
This is definitely not true for most coffee chains in the UK (I haven't actually been to starbucks recently). I've watched them make the coffee straight into my cup.
jrootabega 6y ago
It would be kinda insane right now for a barista even to handle any customer's cup, let alone put it down on the counters and machines, where it could touch the spouts and pitchers and whatnot. And to be honest, it still makes sense even without a pandemic, even if the stakes aren't as high. E. coli will always be around.

bash-j 6y ago

How is this different to the already widely available bamboo or sugar cane single use containers?

Animats 6y ago

Bagasse is widely used for making paper plates, clamshell containers, and other disposables.[1] Cheap, biodegradeable, and non-toxic. What's new here? Smoother texture, perhaps? [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Disposable-bagasse-biodegradable-3-chamber-board_1600061819758.html https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Disposable-bagasse-bi...

klyrs 6y ago
Bagasse is short fibers that absorb water and oil readily. Adding longer bamboo fibers seems to increase tolerance for both. The stuff that's out there now wouldn't hold near-boiling water for a minute much less 2 hours, which is their claim.
- Kankuro 6y ago
  The temperuture of the coffee will drop quickly, so I wonder if it would not resist to water consistently heaten for 2 hours or if it will fall apart after 2 hours if it contained hot water (that would be bad if you forgot your coffee on your desk).
  - Steve44 6y ago
    The current PE lined cups will also leak after some time. They are designed for immediate use, not as liquid storage containers. Most of them, especially the higher quality ones, will usually last a day or two before significantly leaking but not always. Don't leave one on your desk overnight, I've seen the messy results!
- Animats 6y ago
  Bagasse is a long-fiber material, but the usual process for extracting sugar (wire brushes, crushing) leaves you with more of a powder. Longer fibers can be extracted, oriented, and used to make oriented strand board, which is like particleboard but with more tensile strength. Here's some research in Brazil on that.[1] Brazil being the world's largest produce of sugar cane residue, they have plenty of raw material to work with. Probably good for making IKEA-type furniture even more cheaply. [1] http://article.sapub.org/pdf/10.5923.j.ijme.20120204.04.pdf http://article.sapub.org/pdf/10.5923.j.ijme.20120204.04.pdf

reactspa 6y ago

If anyone who's reading this has PM Modi's ear, please forward this to him. He loves promoting news such as this.

teilo 6y ago

If this can eliminate paper coffee cups with leaking seams, I'm all for it.

markvdb 6y ago

From the article: "Once used, these could be dumped in landfills with a clear conscience." Naturally biodegradable waste is not landfill material. A well-informed reporter not realising that shows how much work there still is to do. The EU single use plastic ban [0] is coming in July 20201. Is there any US equivalent yet? [0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190321IPR32111/parliament-seals-ban-on-throwaway-plastics-by-2021 https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190321IP...

ikiris 6y ago
Yeah Trump banned biodegradable alternatives, and made a coal subsidy.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Dumps are anaerobic, so I'm not sure anything is biodegradable once earth is layered on top of it. My understanding is that once something goes into a landfill, it's there for a thousand years or more.
Steve44 6y ago
The EU 1999 Landfill Directive is about the phase-out of biodegradable waste going to landfill. Nothing which composts or biodegrades should be disposed of this way. These cups should not go in this waste stream, the only end of life is commercial composting as I don't believe they are suitable for home composting. https://www.ciwm.co.uk/ciwm/knowledge/landfill-directive.aspx https://www.ciwm.co.uk/ciwm/knowledge/landfill-directive.asp...
INTPenis 6y ago
This always irked me about my wonderful doggie poop bags. For 3 years I've been using Earth Rated bags made out of corn starch but they go into the same bin as all the plastic poop bags. So they literally drown in a sea of plastic because I don't want to just leave them by the road.
- Steve44 6y ago

djrogers 6y ago

> They also found that when they made a cup out of the stuff and filled it with water heated almost to boiling point, the cup remained intact for more than two hours. Though this is not as long as a plastic cup would last (it would survive indefinitely) it is long enough for all practical purposes. Err, no. A disposable cup that leaks after 2 hours is a horrible product. Disposable cups are at their most useful in the car, and it’s easy for a bit of coffee to be left in a cup for more than a couple of hours.

CobrastanJorji 6y ago
That's a good point, but the world goes through something like half a trillion disposable cups per year. Even if 99% of them are used exclusively to store hot liquids in cars for over two hours, that still leaves 5 billion cups per year that we could usefully replace with these.
- dorgo 6y ago
  Just a little overhead of deciding which type of cup you want and to not forget to keep the melting one out of your car.
  - christophilus 6y ago
    Someone mentioned a silicone sleeve in the cup holder would be a fine solution to this.
seszett 6y ago
To me, drinking in a car is a very American thing and I don't think this would be a problem here. If this product works in most of the world but not the US, it would still be better than using plastic cups everywhere. Although paper cups are already common anyway.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  People drink in their car all over the world, what makes it "very American"?

disposablex 6y ago

Always love these disposable avenues of eating and drinking. Not sure if it started after seeing willy wonka eating a cup[0] he just drink out of or not. But I always remember reading an article about Indian food-carts serving tea in the morning[1][2]. They make really thin clay cups to serve it in. When you're done you smash the cup on the road when you're done. [0] https://twitter.com/omgfacts/status/885198079401631745?lang=en https://twitter.com/omgfacts/status/885198079401631745?lang=... [1] https://vedicmix.com/drink-your-chai-and-break-your-cup/ https://vedicmix.com/drink-your-chai-and-break-your-cup/ [2] https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2016/10/26/kolkatas-age-old-tradition-of-bhar-clay-cups-of-tea/ https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2016/10/26/kolkatas-age-ol...

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
Clay is a non-renewable resource.
- sgerenser 6y ago
  Clay itself is essentially unlimited... there’s so much of it and it’s constantly being reformed (although on a much slower time scale than, say, wood). However the energy used to fire it might be more of a problem.
Steve44 6y ago
> When you're done you smash the cup on the road when you're done. Why would you ever want to encourage people to litter. We need to encourage people to be responsible and dispose of their waste correctly.
- disposablex 6y ago
  You act like I invented the custom. I don't encourage or condone littering but if you've even glanced at the pages from the links it indirectly addresses that. Also it's much better than the alternative of non-biodegradable plastics. > Because the shards were unglazed, the cup would simply dissolve over time in the rain and sun, and from the friction of peoples feet walking over it > No one know how long the tradition of environmentally friendly clay cups can resist the onslaught of cheap plastic. > But plastic [is] rapidly replac[ing] the clay.

paulintrognon 6y ago

Disposable items should be one of our most wanted enemies. What about reusable cups like mugs? You should then be expected to BYOC everywhere. Yes that would mean a lot of education and changes of mentallities and that's not going to happen anytime soon unless we pass laws for that kind of thing. And we totally should, IMHO. (edit: removed the part in which I stated that burning bagasse is clean energy as I want the discussion to be focused on my first point)

hannob 6y ago
Observation from Germany: A couple of years ago I wouldn't bring my own cup, because I was uncomfortable with having conversations about it. This has changed, because it's now prevalent enough that I'd consider it "not unusual" to have my own cup. Also plenty of places now offer small discounts. I'm not doing it for the discounts, but that of course adds to the normalization. (Also: Covid makes things more complicated and I've been wary of using my reusable cup once again, though I also massively reduced my coffee-not-at-home-consumption, and after all that'll be over at some point.)
- nicoburns 6y ago
  I don't think reusable cups are an isuse with covid. After all it's your cup. And the baristas will have to touch disposable one too. So long as you wash it I guess.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    Reusable cups allow the customer to contaminate the barista, as well as the other way around, so it's an extra avenue for infection - and a more dangerous one, since he's going to be serving coffee to hundreds more customers and does not get disinfected between each customer. Coffee shops here in Ireland stopped accepting reusable cups during 2020.
sokoloff 6y ago
Where does this end? I could also bring my own silverware, my own plate and bowl, my own cloth napkin. “Hey, we’re going to get some soup and go for walk; wanna come?” “Sorry, I can’t, I thought I was going to have a salad and so I only brought my salad plates and utensils with me.” I think it’s fairly unreasonable to expect people to lug around everything they might need for the day every day.

benrr 6y ago

If single-use cups are still going to be around, I’d much rather it be in this form than its current. Having said that, we need a culture shift back to reusable products. I can’t help but feel like the tech industry is guilty of perpetuating a mindset of just throwing things away and getting a new thing without understanding the consequences.

xchaotic 6y ago

A reusable cup is still higher quality and more eco, right?

Puts 6y ago

I remember as a kid in the 90s there was coffee mugs made of potato starch. It was said you could even eat the mug itself if you wanted to. Wonder what happened to those?

intricatedetail 6y ago
All got eaten?
Steve44 6y ago
KFC trialled an edible cup in 2015 here in the UK. I don't think it took off, more of a gimmick in this form but quite an interesting experiment. https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/25/kfc-unveils-the-uks-first-edible-coffee-cup-the-scoff-ee-cup-geddit-5078253/ https://metro.co.uk/2015/02/25/kfc-unveils-the-uks-first-edi...

intricatedetail 6y ago

Has anyone successfuly quit coffee? I quit cigarettes, alcohol but tried many times to quit coffee and just can't. I feel so terrible it feels it gets worse every day I don't drink, then a little cup of espresso fixes everything.

Roritharr 6y ago
It took me 4 days of headaches but afterwards I had no symptoms. My friend group did a challenge to go without caffeine for 30 days. Everyone made it. My "trick" was to treat the withdrawal symptoms like I was coming off of heroine, visualize a clear improvement after the slump. The rest was just to find caffeine free replacements. Coke Zero Caffeine-Free was a blessing.
BossingAround 6y ago
> Has anyone successfuly quit coffee? Sure. I assume you tried to go cold turkey on coffee, and didn't like it. I'd suggest the gradual method, which might work better for you. Over the span of a week, normalize your coffee intake. Have just two cups of coffee a day at a regular time with known quantity of coffee. Next week, reduce the amount of coffee in one cup by 1/2. So, if you grind 30g of coffee, grind 15g. The week after that, reduce the amount of coffee in the other cup to the same amount. The week after that, reduce the amount of coffee in one cup by 1/4 (or, eliminate entirely). One week after that, do the same to the other cup. Before you know it, going cold turkey gives you no symptoms. You can see how this goes on. Adjust the time period and/or the coffee reduction to whatever works for you. For me, a week and coffee reduction by 1/4th (of the original amount) worked just fine for me.
andromeduck 6y ago
It's like diet coke, you can either gradually wean off over a few months or take a few weeks off work and just bite the bullet.
nicoburns 6y ago
It typically takes me 2-3 weeks to not miss it. And that's after tapering down consumption. It's definitely doable.

contingencies 6y ago

Currently purchasing a full plastics thermoforming line. Not a chemist, but AFAIK current market available 'biostarch polymers' (AFAIK always PLA; which may be marketed as made from corn, sugar cane, etc.) are actually extremely environmentally unfriendly because of the massive embodied energy required to create the industry-ready polymer from the bio-waste material. Their single benefit is nominal biodegradability. It is far better for the environment if single use plastics are just minimized, for example by re-using all containers in your supply chain. This has therefore been our focus. For the last mile to the consumer, however, it's unfortunate that people are now used to disposables, so it's likely going to take a technology shift like Dr. Zhu's or an improved form of traditional techniques such as palm leaf wrapping (common in South and Southeast Asia) or single-use clay pottery (India) to improve the situation. Our company have been considering sponsoring an open robotics challenge in this space (commercially viable deployments of traditional palm leaf wrapping). If anyone would like to co-sponsor, get in touch.

reitzensteinm 6y ago
That's surprising, I'd have assumed there's a bunch of embodied energy in clay pottery too. I'd certainly have felt more guilty throwing away a single use pottery cup than one made of paper. It's frustrating how counter intuitive a lot of environmental issues are.
- m463 6y ago
  I'm sure things get twisted around like plastic recycling. This is sort of how it seems to me sometimes: https://www.theonion.com/geologists-we-may-be-slowly-running-out-of-rocks-1819571484 https://www.theonion.com/geologists-we-may-be-slowly-running...
nicoburns 6y ago
It won't necessarily take a technology shift. Single-use containers could also be legislated against. And the reverse supply chains to get containers back to producers put in place.
- 6y ago

baybal2 6y ago

There is no so much "waste" left from sugar cane. The bagasse is already used as free fuel to boil cane juice. Only places where electricity, or natural gas is really, really cheap have surplus bagasse.

deleted 6y ago
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guillem_lefait 6y ago
I'm living in Martinique where there is an important rhum industrie. Another common use of bagasse is compost.

seanwilson 6y ago

How about incentivise every coffee place to serve in standard sizes and accept reusable cups from each other where either you can ask for your cup to be filled up or replaced with a similar clean one for a big customer discount? Something similar to returning the glass bottle the fizzy drink came in for a deposit.

christophilus 6y ago
You’d have to solve the sanitization problem. Local growler pubs seem to have solved this pretty well, though.
arnarbi 6y ago
Here is one of my favorite things: https://us.huskee.co/swap/ https://us.huskee.co/swap/ Plus the cups look and feel really nice.

crazygringo 6y ago

The article isn't clear at all on how this compares to existing paper cups. Papers cups basically all have a wax coating on the inside so they don't absorb your coffee. Otherwise they'd obviously get soaked pretty much immediately. And wax is biodegradable. Has anything prevented a waxed bagasse cup from being made before? Does the bagasse+bamboo combo still require wax, or is the advantage that it doesn't? And if the bagasse is already being fully utilized as fuel, is this really going to be an environmental benefit? What will the sugar processing plants use as fuel instead? If it's oil (or coal), would this wind up being worse for the environment overall? Technically this is interesting... it's just very unclear to me whether it's a good idea.

baybal2 6y ago
> And if the bagasse is already being fully utilized as fuel, is this really going to be an environmental benefit? What will the sugar processing plants use as fuel instead? If it's oil (or coal), would this wind up being worse for the environment overall? It will turn into a new cotton, or biofuel corn. Environmentalist laws often have counterintuitive consequences. Very often, new "technical" plants outprice food crops.
MisterBastahrd 6y ago
Sugar processing plants have far more bagasse than they can ever use. My father and great grandfather both worked at sugar mills in Louisiana. Most bagasse sits in gigantic piles that need to be constantly soaked with water (we're talking about a 10,000 ton pile of sugar-enriched fermentable plant matter sitting in the sun during a tropical summer) until it is harvested by companies that make particle board.
Fej 6y ago
Many cups which appear wax-coated are in fact coated with plastic.

switch007 6y ago

Has the 'overton window' of coffee consumption shrunk so completely as to exclude the European way of drinking coffee? Why can't we just walk up to a bar, order a coffee, have it served in a ceramic cup? I guess the majority of coffee shops not actually having a bar is a bit of a hindrance!

redvenom 6y ago

We should eliminate single-use items like coffee cups altogether.