Disposable Cups – Cups for All Occasions

With the march of progress going relentlessly forward, things have also been streamlined in their designs to fit the various lifestyles of today’s different types of people. One item that stands out is the popular disposable cups.

 There are now several types already in manufacture these days – with options of being practical to being convenient, fast to easy handling and many more variations to fill in the choices of many different people.

Aside from the popular ones, they also come in many other materials on top of the favorites paper cups used in handling liquid beverages (coffee, tea, juices, soda, and water among others). All of these have options to consider the many choices of many different users.

Groupings

The Melbourne disposable coffee cups are now in three major groups consisting of paper, plastic and foam. The paper group has so many varieties of the cups to choose from. Some seemed to have been made to tailor fit certain drinks. 

This is to accommodate the many drinks with their myriad characteristics --- hot, cold, lukewarm, with each cup made accordingly. This does not include the plastic group or those that are made of polystyrene or some other materials.

Hot cup / cold cup

The recycled paper cups are manufacture from post-consumer fibers. The cups are approved by the FDA and great for cold or hot drinks. They use less virgin trees in the making and less trees being killed.

The cold cups are made in compostable paper styles, double sided paper styles, and paper-lined style with thick PLA shells. They come in many hot and cold designs as well.

Paper cold cup is made in compostable paper styles, double-side poly paper styles and paper-lined

style. They are available for use in hot or cold cup designs. You also need to choose which cup you want for your choice drink (hot or cold).

Insulated / poly-coated

This keeps the coffee sleeves on hand. This paper cup for hot liquids are designed with air pocket insulation that keeps beverages warm without burning the customer’s hands. The liquids are usually coffee, chocolate and tea. The feature is the inner and outer shell separated by air layers for insulation.

Poly-coated paper cups on the other hand features a polymer coating for added insulation. They are also good in serving either hot or cold beverages.

The feature is single or double poly-coating for additional rigidity. Its linings are used to protect both the inside and outside of the cup from weakening caused by water condensation.

Polystyrene / foam

The cups made of polystyrene are designed for high-impact. The materials used are sturdy, shatterproof and flexible. These are manufactured to withstand the impacts in most popular party games. However, they are designed for cold drinks,

Foam cups, on the other hand, are made because they are great insulators. Most are also good to carry cold or hot liquids and the liquids usually hold their temperatures longer and are not dissipated by the air or handling. (Another plus point is that they are low-cost and lightweight.) Melbourne disposable coffee cups

These are some of the more popular disposable cups these days.

Recyclable Coffee Cups

Coffee cups are the tip of an iceberg of issues around packaging recycling and with recyclable coffee cups Melbourne as well, there has been some confusion often where the cardboard sleeve is recyclable and may have a recyclable symbol on it, and people interpret that then as the whole cup being recyclable. There probably is some work to do on labelling. Unrecycled plastic takes hundreds of years to break down, meaning lots of it ends up impacting the natural environment. In order to ensure that disposable cups conform to health and safety requirements, they are made with paper fiber and a 5 percent polyethylene lining which is bonded together under a high heat. This use of mixed material ensures the strength and safety of the cups, but it renders the cups difficult to recycle. Although both the paper and plastic components of disposable cups are recyclable, the materials need to be separated out, which is a more complicated process than traditional paper is recycling. It is because there is a very tightly bonded polyethylene liner that prevents the cup from basically soaking up the contents of the liquid. Because that is tightly bonded it is quite challenging to remove it in a normal paper mill process, is my understanding. For that reason, it can either contaminate the paper stream or it can slow the paper stream down in terms of having to operate a slower process to recover that polyethylene liner. Most recyclable coffee cups Melbourne have a plastic coating that must be separated from paper before recycling, which ordinary paper recycling systems are not set up to do. In some cases, coffee chains are making recycling more difficult for councils because the coffee cup materials are getting mixed up with the paper that many householders have taken time and trouble over collecting, resulting in more waste going to landfill.

Another significant barrier to the widespread of recyclable coffee cups is the challenges of recycling packaging that has come into contact with food or drink. Consumers have been led to believe that laminated cups are widely recyclable and widely recycled through conventional systems when in fact, relatively very few pass into a processor and even fewer are properly processed to extract the full value of the resources they contain. There’s a lot of reusable cups to be found on the market, some are made of glass, stainless steel, plastic and then you have bamboo which is considered to be the best and most environment friendly option available, because not only is the cup reusable, it is also biodegradable. Looks almost exactly the same as a normal disposable cup, but there's a big difference. This one can be used over and over again and even if something happens to it and you have to throw it away, don't worry too much. The cup is made of bamboo, which means it will return to nature within a year, if composted. Not every coffee shop is going to switch to sustainable products overnight, and neither are the manufacturers. As people begin to refuse single use cups with their coffee, proprietors will adapt and adopt the same ideals their patrons display. In the end the power lies with you to make a difference.

Takeaway Coffee Cups – Recycling is Key

Currently, it had been estimated that the number of Sydney takeaway coffee cups that are being disposed of every year amounts to over half a trillion, which is about seventy cups for every person on the planet. Unfortunately, more than 95% of these go directly to landfills.

Another unfortunate fact is that the whole process is also not sustainable from the simple fact that most of these paper cups are made straight out of virgin materials coming from trees.

Takeaway

At the outset, these paper cups are commonly named takeaway cups and they were originally designed to be that way – to be taken away. Later, when we finish consuming our beverage (coffee, mostly (we disposed of the cups in the usual throwaway manner, like any trash.

These days, most of them usually end up in ever-growing landfills in most countries where they are used. Another wrong disposal method is burning them (and throwing more carbon into the air). Some conscientious users throw them into compostable bins.

The unfortunate part is simply that most people are unaware of all these, and that there are so few recycling companies that recycle these cups into another set of useful paper materials.

Plastic coating

The biggest reason these paper cups can’t be recycled is the fact that they are designed that way at the outset of their manufacture. Today, a typical paper cup is actually coated with about 5% plastic.

The presence of plastic is necessary because the material can hold the liquid in the cup without leaking all over the place. The first paper cups suffer such things as liquid leakage, seepage of liquid into the paper materials and some other minor drinking disasters.

These and other things that undermined the reason for the use of paper material caused the development of so-called design renovations. The use of plastic was originally thought of as brilliant. The coatings and other innovations (rounded rims, etc) came in later.

Wax

Not all paper cups are coated in plastic, however. Less frequently, some manufacturers opted to coat them with wax. They actually work just like the plastic coatings.

First, the coating holds the liquid in without spilling and without the seepage factor that undermines the paper material. (It becomes soggy and unusable.) This usually happens if the cold contents develops some condensation outside of the cup and seeps into the paper material.

Recycling difficulties

Much of the recycling problems of these paper cups stems from the fact that the whole item contains plastic. The presence of plastic contaminates the whole paper recycling process.

Another problem is the difficulty of separating the plastic from the paper materials. This would mean a massive logistical problem for the recycling company.

At landfills, these cups can also release methane gas with 21 times global warming potential than carbon dioxide. Other cups are incinerated to avoid the growing landfills, only to release carbon into the air as well.

For the user, separating Sydney takeaway coffee cups coated with plastic from the wax-coated cups (which can be recycled) would be a totally new habit to form. (Teaching new habits to people can be futile.)