You can be forgiven for thinking that the single use cups you get your takeaway coffee in are recyclable.
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After all, they’re made of paper and cardboard, so they must be recyclable, right?
Wrong. The majority of the single use cups used by cafes have a polyethylene lining in them that stops the liquid seeping through the cardboard.
The polyethylene renders the cups unrecyclable in Australia. Other countries do have the infrastructure to recycle such cups, but it is a costly process and Australia hasn’t taken it up.
So although many of us throw the cups into the recycling bin, they will always end up in landfill. And that includes so-called biocups.
Local environmentally aware cafes Bent on Food and the Garden Grub in Wingham, and Wild Fig Wholefoods Cafe and Centrepoint Cafe in Taree, offer discounts for customers who bring their own cups. When people don’t bring their own cups, these cafes elect to use biocups (except for Centrepoint, who are currently researching options), believing they are doing the right thing because they are marketed as compostable.
They are made of compostable material, but unless you collect them and take them to a composting facility, mix them with earth, introduce lots of bacteria that will process them, then they’re going to end up in landfill as well.
- Brendan Lee, sales and marketing manager Closed Loop Recycling
Bent on Food proprietor, Donna Carrier knows biocups aren’t the perfect solution, though, but at this point in time there doesn’t appear to be one.
“We use the takeaway plastic containers, but they’re actually from recycled plastic. They’re still not good - we’re trying to work out how to do better, because even the biopacks are not feasible,” Donna said.
The other cafe owners were quick to tell me the biocups were not biodegradable, but were compostable, and they are made from ‘plant materials’.
However the recent ABC TV program War on Waste exposed the truth on biocups.
“They are made of compostable material, but unless you collect them and take them to a composting facility, mix them with earth, introduce lots of bacteria that will process them, then they’re going to end up in landfill as well,” explained sales and marketing manager of Closed Loop Recycling, Brendan Lee on episode three of the War on Waste series.
“So it doesn’t matter which bin it goes in, it ends up in landfill,” Mr Lee said.
Joost Bakker, who opened Australia’s first zero waste cafe 10 years ago and is now a zero waste activist was also interviewed on War on Waste. Mr Bakker said he had tested the biocups in three different compost systems and none of them were able to compost the supposedly compostable cups which are manufactured in Taiwan.
So for now, keep cups seem to be the only viable alternative to combating the unrecyclable recyclable cups problem.
For more information on the War on Waste series and articles on how to reduce your waste, visit www.abc.net.au/ourfocus/waronwaste/.