The disposable cup fallacy
- Unfiltered
- Mar 5, 2019
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 11, 2019
By Ben Malandrinos
I’m minding my own business sitting in a café on the edge of London’s banking district. It’s one of those speciality cafés that sells organic food, and markets itself to ‘sustainable living’ sort of people. The coffee is good, be that slightly overpriced, and it’s usually quiet. A secret haven to get some peaceful afternoon reading done.
I look up from my book to an incongruous scene. A lady is shouting at the barista while shaking a takeaway cup in her fist. “This is not recyclable, it’s a lie!” she howls and slams the cup on the bar. In defiance she storms out, no coffee in hand. The puzzling scenario sticks in my mind and two days later I buy a coffee ‘to go’ from the same café. I look at the cup and sure enough there is a stamped recycling symbol printed in green. So, what was this incensed lady talking about?
After doing some digging, I have stumbled on the fallacy of the disposable cup and the root cause to the lady’s outrage. I am by no means a recycling fanatic and I regretfully don’t often recycle at home. Having said that, I always try to put my takeaway cup in the recycling section of a bin if permitted, and never litter on the street. But through some uncovering I have come to realise that my small efforts are mostly in vain due to a failed system that is quickly becoming somewhat of a disposable cup disaster in the UK.
Most disposable cups in the UK are made of paper, which is indeed recyclable. But the paper interior is bonded with polyethylene to make the cup water-tight and more heat resistant. The polyethylene lining is incredibly difficult to separate from the paper, making the cup unrecyclable at a standard recycling mill. Specialist recycling plants need to process the disposable cups before they can be recycled, for which there are only three in the UK.
Most media outlets reporting on the disposable cup fallacy fail to name these organisations, but after contacting Veollia, an environmental solutions service, it was uncovered that these three plants are: James Cropper PLC, ACE UK and DS Smith. DS Smith being the largest of the three with the capacity to process 2.5 billion disposable cups every year at their Kemsley Paper Mill in Kent. According to the DS Smith website their plant would be able to recycle the total number of disposable cups used each year in the UK.
Which begs the question: what is the problem? One specialist plant alone has the capacity to recycle all the disposable cups used in the UK. The problem lies with the system. Bureaucracy in the recycling process means that there is a lack of transportation of recyclable waste to the correct recycling facilities. The likelihood of your takeaway Costa coffee cup, after being placed in a high-street recycling bin, ever reaching one of the above-mentioned plants is little to none. Only 1 in 400 cups being recycled according to the 2017/2019 report by the Environmental Audit Committee on Disposable Packaging Coffee Cups.
Laura Hindley, Global PR Manager for the data analysis company Wood Mackenzie says, “England and Wales have a huge variety of recycling regimes, run by local authorities, which makes doing things at an economic scale very complex.” Wood Mackenzie focuses on the natural resources value chain, including the recycling of disposable cups. The complexity of the recycling system in the UK is due to the onus of recycling being given to councils that are supposed to meet targets set by national government. The sheer quantity of disposable cups means that most councils are unable to meet these targets. On top of this, there is no set target for coffee cup recycling due to the nature of the product. Material specific recycling targets have been set: 69.5% for paper and 51% for plastic by 2020. However, it is unclear which category disposable cups fit into. This results in disposable cups falling through the net of the UK recycling system, and more often than not, straight into landfill. Beyond this, Dr Anne Coffey, Conservative MP, was cited in the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on Disposable Coffee Cups explaining that at present there are no confirmed UK recycling targets for paper or plastic after we leave the European Union.
The same report stated that: “Consumers have been led to believe that laminated cups are widely recyclable and widely recycled through conventional systems when in fact, relatively few pass into a re-processor and even fewer are properly processed to extract the full value of the resources they contain.” Affirming that consumers have been led to believe the false truth that disposable cups are easily recyclable.
Education and policy are the two driving forces for change in this situation. The coffee industry needs to take some responsibility for using a massively unsustainable product and look to alternatives like compostable cups or better collection and transport of disposable cups to the correct facilities. As more people become aware that polyethylene lined disposable cups are not a sustainable product for the coffee industry, consumers will look to other products like reusable plastic, ceramic or glass cups. Some coffee chains have also started using incentives in the form of discounts to customers that bring their own reusable cups, coined by MPs as the ‘latte levy’.
A survey conducted of 21 coffee consumers revealed that 90 percent believe that single use plastics in the coffee industry are a problem. The remaining 10 percent supposed that they did not know whether or not it was a problem. After asking the same group where they disposed of their takeaway cups 43 percent said they threw them away anywhere they could, 38 percent made an effort to use specific recycling bins and 19 percent used normal bins on the high-street. This showcases that the majority of people are aware of the problem, but do not transform their awareness into action. Hence the need for incentives.
Daniel Hemsley, founder of Unwrpd, a zero-waste subscription service argues that “If we look at the impact of the plastic bag tax it’s hard to argue against a ‘latte levy’. Anything that encourages or reminds people to think about the negative impact of disposable plastics clearly helps reduce consumption across the country.” However, Haydn Sanders, founder and director of TheBioStraw Company challenges this by explaining that reusing is not the answer and that “consumers cannot be bothered having to think about what they need to have with them during a usual day, it needs to be made easy. It should still be single use but single use products that biodegrade, not products that last 100s of years. If we can do this, then we have solved the issue.”
Haydn Sanders believes that we are already on the right trajectory for change and notes that, “we now live in a world where people are noticing the long-lasting effects of plastic and that we all need to do something about it. Society is making a difference, so all businesses are following suit and it’s so powerful. We notice first-hand how savvy consumers are now and how pleased and ready they are for a change in the way single use plastics are used.” His company is already pioneering change in the field of sustainable alternative products and real change is already being noticed.
The new phenomenon of ‘greenwashing’, where companies falsify the sustainability of products, best describes the disposable cup fallacy. Ultimately, we need to realise a collective desire from consumers and policy makers to eradicate unsustainable products. Daniel Hemsley iterates, “it isn’t just about making one change, it’s about being aware of the overall impact our lives have. Carrying a reusable water bottle is an important step but it’s only just the beginning.” Understand that your contribution, no matter how insignificant, augments the momentum for change.
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