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

economist.com

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

#41

Post by [deleted] »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #26
djrogers wrote: post #18

> 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 th…

We need more environmental tech, but we also have to adapt our behaviour a little bit. How can you make something that is degradable in an environmental friendly way, but also last forever? Something has to give.

[deleted]

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

#42

Post by Steve44 »

INTPenis wrote: post #32
markvdb wrote: post #11

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/20190321IP...

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.

I've had a quick look at those bags. They seem to do two types, one has an Oxo-degradable additive which is currently being banned in the EU[1] because all it does is break the bag down into microplastics. The visible litter problem may be reduced but it's not a good solution to anything.

Their other bags, the light green ones, are only industrial compostable. They will stay as a plastic bag unless they go down the correct waste stream.

People leaving their dog poo bags has been a problem for years, in the UK they are know as Dog Poo Trees and are disgusting.

[1] https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/wrap-caught-up-...

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

#43

Post by dorgo »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #22
djrogers wrote: post #18

> 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 th…

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.

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.

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

#44

Post by benrr »

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.

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

#46

Post by onion2k »

dawnerd wrote: post #28
seszett wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People drink in their car all over the world, what makes it "very American"?

Here in the UK it's quite unusual for a coffee shop to have parking facilities. Drinking takeaway coffee is practically always done by people who are walking somewhere.

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

#48

Post by timthorn »

onion2k wrote: post #46
dawnerd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People drink in their car all over the world, what makes it "very American"?

Here in the UK it's quite unusual for a coffee shop to have parking facilities. Drinking takeaway coffee is practically always done by people who are walking somewhere.

It might be unusal for them to have dedicated parking facilities (though there are a good number of Starbucks and Costa drive thrus now) but outside of London and city centres there is almost always shared parking close by.

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

#49

Post by hannob »

paulintrognon wrote: post #39

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…

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.)

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

#50

Post by bywaterstreet »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #36
dawnerd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People drink in their car all over the world, what makes it "very American"?

At least here in Norway it would be very unusual for a coffee cup to be left in the car and anyway many of those who do drink a lot of coffee on the go use a reusable cup bought from a petrol station that gives you a year of 'free' coffee. See https://www.circlek.no/koppen for instance.

That's pretty cool. How much is that? "Costa Coffee" (a UK chain) machines are in lots of petrol stations nowadays, but I'm not aware of any kind of subscription.
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