Are compostable coffee cups actually any better for the environment? | 7.30
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- As single-use plastics are phased out, a new industry has emerged to replace them: compostable packaging. It's marketed as the more sustainable alternative, but much of it is going to landfill. Michael Slezak and Jenya Goloubeva report.
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Having worked in hospitality, the oddest request was for customers to bring in their own containers than to use our take away containers. It did cost a bit of time, but I did encourage staff to charge the size down as it did save on our packaging cost.
There was also a discount on customer's own coffee cups, even if it was a Kmart porcelain coffee mug, it was fun for baristas to do latte art in it
The coffeehouses sometimes can't tell how big a container is, so they don't know how to charge for the coffee, and I've seen them prepare the coffee in a paper cup, for measuring purposes, and then pour the contents from the paper cup into the reusable cup, and throw away the paper cup.
I've just done some investigating on this and the waste department at my local council has told me that it costs less than half as much to dispose of compostable and recyclable waste, than it does for land fill waste.
Getting this right can present a significant savings for local councils.
More government funding is needed in research and problem solving.
Once again our deplorable labelling laws are an issue.
And yet it could be fixed with hemp but the government is to scared of America to start farming it on a large scale
Pay off your mortgage faster and save the planet…make your own coffee at home
Single use packaging means that the venue doesn’t require a scullery. Saves on rent and labour. Bit of greenwash and my saving is paid for by the mug consumer
Landfill is fine... unwanted items are taken away to a designated, and regulated area for permanent storage.
If in the future any of those items have some value (plastics, old appliances, Billy-Ray Cyrus CDs etc.), then they are in a convenient location to assist in extraction and repurposing.
I not, we can just cover everything in 10 metres of soil, and make a nice park.
I may be wrong, but surely something that's compostable and in landfill has to be better than something that is not compostable and in landfill? At least then it's not going to be nearly unchanged 200 years later.
Imagine you are landscaping and source your compost from here, do you want coffee cup lids showing up in your lawn?
Composting is an aerobic environment (oxygen). Landfills are anerobic environment (non oxygen). Compostable materials in landfill create methane, since a landfill is an anerobic environment. Methane is 28x more component than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. A non-compostable package in the landfill is inert and sequesters carbon that would otherwise wind up in the air. Compostable packaging typicially sources its compostable resins from sugar cane or corn. So, food is being used to make packaging, which ultimately winds up in a landfill instead of being used as food. So, surprisingly, a compostable package in a landfill is not better for the environment.
Not sure about Australia, but over half of the landfills in North America are capped, meaning they capture gases, specifically methane, for renewable energy. Still a ways to go for the landfills outside of major cities and towns.
I still prefer my KeepCup
Better than what ?
er, plastic.
When the dude from the EPA raises concerns about "18,000 chemicals", you really have to wonder if he is in the right job. Everything is a chemical. Qualifying his inflammatory statement by saying that some of the chemicals were of serious concern, hasn't changed my opinion that he needs to be fired. And, as a matter of interest, what were the other 17,992 "chemicals"?
He is referring to the thousands of types of PFAs chemicals. PFAs chemicals have fluorine and have various levels of toxicity. In the environment, they change into different types, so even if you use a less toxic PFAs chemical, when exposed to the environment, the chemicals change. The chemicals also interact with each other. When government tries to ban some of them, the industry just moves to different versions. California banned ALL of them, if they have fluorine, they're a PFAs and they're banned.
Tanya out there stanning for nationalist govt, whilst doing nothing to tackle country-wide buffel grass, and casually allowing new coal and oil permits...