This reminds me of the Sun Chips bag dilemma…technically compostable, but not likely to happen for most of us. They’re more expensive, and chances are slim that they will biodegrade properly in a home composting setup, unless you have a sustained hot pile going. What does this all mean? There’s plenty of options out there for compostable plastic cup liners. *I can’t find the Solo Bare wax liner option anymore. Enough babbling, here’s what I found: Brand Another company uses sugar cane bagasse, and using this process extraction material for paper products as opposed to burning it for fuel is a better use. What are other companies doing? The range of answers went from mostly plastic liner, PLA liner, or wax lining (only in cold cups).
The real victory would be if this cup didn’t have a plastic liner. Maybe they’re a bit more tedious to manufacture…who knows? I think this idea is getting somewhere, though. I’m going to spend some time learning more about this design, and then wonder why I don’t see these more often. This eliminates the need for the cardboard sleeve. A paper cup with a fold-out handle so you don’t burn your hands.
What happens to this sludge from here? A good guess is that it’s either burned or landfilled…great.Īny better ideas? The coolest example I’ve ever seen resided in Panama: Therefore, the cup’s plastic liner is considered a contaminant. In recycled paper processing mills, the slurry from a pulper is screened to remove plastic, ink, clay, dirt, metals, etc from the paper. The other option is to “recycle” the paper cup, which is more commonly done than composting. Microplastics are a serious concern, whether in compost or the environment. I’ve learned that this definitely isn’t the way to go…in other words, DON’T compost paper products that contain any plastic lining. What is the best solution if you have to use a paper cup? Paper cups can go in the compost pile no problem, just don’t expect them to come out for a while, and they’ll remind you that you put them in there by leaving behind a plastic skeleton.Īdding plastic flakes to our soil doesn’t sound like a good idea, does it? What we can see and remove from the compost pile doesn’t account for the plastic we can’t see. How about a doubly thick paper cup with wax? But I also know that it’s possible to use a paper cup with a PLA (polylactic acid, a compostable plastic) liner with good results. I know from experience that it’s difficult to use a bioplastic cup with hot liquid in it…the cup falls apart pretty quickly. Surprisingly, even a great deal of the “cold cups” have a liner too. My point for doing the research in the first place was because I didn’t realize that nearly all paper cups have a thin plastic (polyethylene) lining inside of them, which is to keep the cup from falling apart (think coffee). I was hoping their eco line would have either cups made from PLA or paper cups with a soybean wax liner, but I guess you can’t have it all. This cup uses a whopping 20% post consumer recycled plastic in its plastic cups. Going further, there’s a Facebook fan page sporting over 45,000 likes…for red solo cups.Īnyway, Solo does have an “eco forward” product line called Bare. I had no idea there was a (terrible) song dedicated to red solo cups, and then within that song saying that “within 14 years they are decomposable”… come on Toby- plastic doesn’t decompose, EVER- it just breaks into smaller pieces for the fish to eat. My research into Solo was definitely the most peculiar.
I couldn’t tell if the customer service people were weirded out by my questions…am I the only person asking this? Probably close to it, but hopefully not the only one. With the exception of Solo and Chinet, all the other companies got back to me (although Dart and Solo appear to be part of the same conglomerate, and Dart replied). In the same spirit as my last post on composting waxed paper, I emailed a bunch of companies that produce paper cups and asked them if their cups contained a plastic liner, and if so, what kind was used. (I reposted this article from my other website, )Ĭan you compost paper cups? The answer is yes, no and depends.
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