Millions of disposable cups are used everyday in developed countries for beverages such as coffee. Few can claim to be 100% compostable.
In Australia PLAnet Cup is one of the first companies to develop a compostable take-a-way cup and lid. The studio was commissioned to developed a low impact, highly visible communication campaign applied to a refreshed brand, image campaign, retail, advertising and web applications.
The work we developed started with investigating green, or sustainable marketing. Our process uncovered a green sector rich with fluffy green messages and images making big claims and loaded with feel good, doing good statements. As an approach we feel that to be green focused and a sustainable business is a given in contemporary commercial life.
PLAnet Cup’s communication campaign had to offer the audience a product that is grass roots, low impact and connected with the ways in which the community is coming to terms with sustainable living. Using humor and kids with a splash of acid green seemed to be a logical starting point to make a meaningful message.
Ask your café for PLAnet Cup and then go out of your way to compost your used cups!
According to wikipedia –
Most paper cups are designed for a single use and then disposal or recycling. A life cycle inventory of a comparison of paper vs plastic cups shows environmental effects of both with no clear winner.[9]
A study of one paper coffee cup with sleeve (16 ounce) shows that the CO2 emissions is about .11 kilograms (.25 pounds) per cup with sleeve – including paper from trees, materials, production and shipping.[10] The loss of natural habitat potential from the paper coffee cup (16 ounce) with a sleeve is estimated to be .09 square meters (.93 square feet).[11]
Over 6.5 million trees were cut down to make 16 billion paper cups used by US consumers in 2006, using 4 billion gallons of water and resulting in 253 million pounds of waste.[8]
Very little recycled paper is used to make paper cups because of contamination concerns and regulations. Because most paper cups are coated with plastic, both composting and recycling of paper cups is uncommon.[8]
Although paper cups are made from renewable resources (wood chips 95% by weight), paper products in a landfill may not decompose, or may release methane if decomposed anaerobically. The manufacture of paper usually requires inorganic chemicals and creates water effluents.
Paper cups may consume more non-renewable resources than cups made of polystyrene foam (whose only significant effluent is pentane).[12][13] A number of cities—including Portland, Oregon — have banned XPS foam cups in take-out and fast food restaurants.[14]
PE is a petroleum based coating on paper cups that can slow down the process of biodegrading. PLA is a biodegradable bio-plastic coating used on some paper cups. PLA is a renewable resource and makes paper cups more compostable, whereas PE is not renewable and is not compostable.