Yesterday we celebrated my sister's birthday at her house. When the cake came out, so did the paper cups.
My husband: "Oh no. Wendy will never let you use those!"
My sister: "Why not? They're biodegradeable. They're made from trees."
Me: "They may be made from trees but they're not biodegradable. I'll get the glasses."
She put them back on the shelf, I grabbed some glasses out of the cabinet and we sang Happy Birthday. I usually have to offer to wash the glasses to get my friends and family to put away the paper cups. This time I didn't. My husband was there.
My sister's argument makes sense. Paper is made from trees and, under normal environmental conditions, a tree will chemically breakdown (rot), enriching the soil with nutrients.
But a wax-coated, dyed blue, paper cup is not a tree. And a landfill is not a normal environmental condition. It's more like a tightly sealed storage container designed to inhibit degradation to protect the environment from harmful contamination. Deprived of air and water, even organic wastes - like paper and grass clippings - degrade very slowly in a landfill.
And what if paper cups
did biodegrade? Should you use them? There is so much information on the web about the energy that goes into making a paper cup. One of the best sites I've found to explain some of these complex processes is the
EIA's kid's page. They give the following argument for using plastic over paper cups. (I guess the argument for using neither is understood.)
A paper cup or a plastic cup? Should you choose paper cups over plastic cups since the paper cups are made from natural wood products and will degrade? Maybe not.
A study by Canadian scientist Martin Hocking shows that making a paper cup uses as much petroleum or natural gas as a polystyrene cup. Plus, the paper cup uses wood pulp. The Canadian study said, "The paper cup consumes 12 times as much steam, 36 times as much electricity, and twice as much cooling water as the plastic cup." And because the paper cup uses more raw materials and energy, it also costs 2.5 times more than the plastic cup. But the paper cup will degrade, right? Probably not. Modern landfills are designed to inhibit degradation so that toxic wastes do not seep into the surrounding soil and groundwater. The paper cup will still be a paper cup 20 years from now.
I'm still curious about the biodegradability of paper cups under "normal circumstances". My kids and I have decided to nail a wax-coated paper cup to our garden fence to see how long it takes to biodegrade. That is, if we can find one in this house...
5 Comments:
Hi, I've been researching disposable cups and I wonder if you can tell me which is worse, paper or polystyrene. I'd always thought polystyrene foam had the most negative impact on the environment, being made from a non-renewable resource, difficult to recycle and non-biodegradable, but some stuff I've been reading has said that paper cups require far more energy to produce, so I wonder if that balances them out.
By Anonymous, at 7:27 PM
Sorry, forgot to leave my name and contact -- I'm Juliana, I wrote the comment above, if you could please respond to juliana.qian at gmail.com I'd really appreciate it.
By Anonymous, at 7:31 PM
The paper cup might still be a paper cup in 20 years if buried in an up-to-date, legally permitted landfill, but a styrofoam cup will still be that in 20 CENTURIES, or maybe 20 millenia. Further, if littered, or burned, or carried to a not-so-perfect dump site,or intentionally or unintentionally mixed with other papers sent to a recycling station, the paper cup will disappear (or yes, recycle) but the plastic will perservere as litter, or contaminate the recyclables, or release nasties when burned, or otherwise fail to reach a benign end.
The styrofoam cup, like almost any non-essential use of petroleum, is very hard to defend when considered comprehensively.
By Brendan, at 8:33 PM
Hei, it's a little astonished to see the number of disposed cups increasing so fast. I'm in Shanghai,China
By Yu, at 10:52 PM
Check out Clovernook Center f/t Blind in Cincinnati www.Clovernook.org. They produce an FDA approved biodegradable/compostable hot paper cup that has a PLA (corn based) liner on the inside of the cup. No polyehtylene here. Suitable for recycling and compostyabliity thus avoinding landfills.
By Anonymous, at 11:06 AM
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