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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

#91

Post by christophilus »

dorgo wrote: post #43
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Someone mentioned a silicone sleeve in the cup holder would be a fine solution to this.

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

#92

Post by christophilus »

seanwilson wrote: post #77

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.

You’d have to solve the sanitization problem. Local growler pubs seem to have solved this pretty well, though.

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

#93

Post by crazygringo »

contingencies wrote: post #57

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

I suppose that depends on where the embodied energy comes from, no? If instead of oil or coal, it's all hydro or nuclear, then presumably the biodegradability is an overall benefit?

Second, I'm curious... how actually does one measure the tradeoff between energy usage and biodegradability? The former would seem to be measured in reduction of CO2 output, while biodegradability is in reduction of non-biodegradable mass. But I can't even begin to imagine how to compare the two.

Is there some standard methodology? Or does it just come down to people's personal preferences?

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

#94

Post by smileysteve »

sokoloff wrote: post #83
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…

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.

The spork has existed for some time.

Soldiers and campers have had mess kits where they cooked and ate their food from a compact portable system for at least 100 years.

If anything, modern be silicone has increased the portability and utility of mess kits dramatically in the last 2 decades

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

#95

Post by crazygringo »

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.

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

#96

Post by jrootabega »

esturk wrote: post #6

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.

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.

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

#97

Post by baybal2 »

crazygringo wrote: post #95

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 th…

> 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.

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

#98

Post by djrogers »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #81
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…

But a cup of water heated to the boiling point would long have cooled off by the 2 hours, so would this still count then?

The article said nothing about maintaining a boil in the test cups - presumably the water in the cups under test cooled as well, no?

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

#99

Post by djrogers »

Angostura wrote: post #74
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…

I'm not sure existing paper cups would fair much better, would they?

The millions of drivers with disposable coffee cups in their cars would disagree.

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

#100

Post by sgerenser »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #34
disposablex wrote: post #27

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/88519807940163…

Clay is a non-renewable resource.

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.
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