Finally, green takeaway cups are here

You’re on your way to work and you nip into the local coffee shop and a drink ‘to go’. Heading back out and into the swathe of people that are getting on with their daily commute you eventually finish your much needed morning brew and drop your now empty takeaway cup into the nearest bin and carry on. It’s a routine that millions of people like you have, and one that is repeated day after day, week after week.

But did you know that the cup you had and discarded most likely cannot be recycled?

It is estimated that 50 billion takeaway cups – enough to reach the moon and back a handful of times – end up on landfill sites in the United States alone, and now imagine what that number will be when waste from Australia and Great Britain and other coffee-mad nations are added. It’s a staggering amount.

The reason as to why these generally cardboard constructions aren’t recyclable is because of the the presence of an extremely thin, but vital, layer of plastic. The plastic is needed to ensure that the cups don’t become warped and porous when filled with liquid.

Recycling plants therefore need specialised equipment in order to separate the paper from the plastic, equipment that isn’t readily available – and so the cups head to landfill.

If you’re surprised about this fact, don’t worry as you are not alone: A couple of years ago a study by the consumer group Which? found that 8 in 10 people thought that these cups could be recycled.

However one British businessman and inventor is hoping to reinvent the takeaway coffee cup.

Martin Myerscough has come up with an alternative that will make the recycling process easier and the cups greener.

“We went back a step,” he said, talking about his design process. Instead of building the cup around the plastic, the thin layer is added last.

This means that the film will be easily trapped by conventional filters and the paper and cardboard can carry on to be repurposed.

“[The drink] will taste the same, it will look the same, you can put your lips to it the same,” Myerscough noted, saying that the only difference between normal cups and his Green Your Cup is that one goes in with the general waste and the other goes in the recycling pile.

Unsurprisingly, environmental advocates have spoken up in praise of this invention, with a Rainforest Alliance spokesperson going on record to state that “Green Your Cup takes a single use waste product that too often ends up in landfill and turns it into a resource that can be recycled,” hailing it as a major breakthrough for the beverage industry.