As some of you may remember, late last year we were avid watchers of the BBC show ‘Hugh’s War on Waste’. During the series, host Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall went on a mission to discover why so much of the food we produce in the UK goes to waste. His findings highlighted a practice which saw perfectly good food disposed of, simply because it did not meet the aesthetic standards demanded by large supermarkets. Now Hugh is back for another series and this time he has product packaging in his sights.
In the most recent episode in the series, aired on Thursday, Hugh investigated the takeaway coffee cups used by major high street coffee chains such as Starbucks, Costa and Caffe Nero. Every year we use more than 2.5 billion coffee cups of this kind and the show highlighted one of their major flaws – recyclability. Many people wrongly believe that, as the cups appear to be made from paper, they can be recycled. However, as packaging expert Mark Shayler explained, this is not completely true.
“People think it is just cardboard with wax on it, whereas it is cardboard with polyethylene on it. It [polyethylene] does its job – it keeps the cup waterproof, it lets it hold water or in this case coffee. But the problem with it is, when it goes into the recycling stream, it doesn’t allow the cardboard to be recycled effectively. And what makes it worse is it is not just lined with plastic but you have to use virgin material in the board, you have to chop down new trees. You get a lot of inks in recycled papers and they are not allowed to be transferred directly into foods – therefore you have to have virgin materials.”
A quick inspection of a waste bin in London found that the public believe they are doing the right thing by placing them in the recycling section, when in fact they should be going into general waste. The truth is that in many instances the cardboard sleeve surrounding the cup is recyclable, but the cup itself it not – but how many of us are actually aware of the need to separate them before putting them in the bin?
Hugh’s investigation also comes at the same time that Starbucks have begun a trial of new recyclable cups in their UK outlets. The cup, called the ‘Frugalpac, is the brainchild of British entrepreneur Martin Myerscough. It is hoped the new cups will dramatically reduce the number of cups which are currently with incinerated or sent to landfull.
You can catch up with the latest episode from the series by clicking here.