A Helping Hand

It’s an alarming statistic and one you may well have heard before: more than a billion disposable cups get thrown away in Australia every year. New Zealanders, meanwhile, throw away 295 million single-use cups each year.

While they may appear recyclable, standard disposable paper coffee cups are made with a plastic lining to waterproof them. And because of that plastic lining most coffee cups can’t be recycled in the standard recycling process, eventually ending up in landfill.

That plastic waste soon adds up, with all these cups equating to about 60,000 kilograms of unrecyclable waste each year. That’s about the same weight as a space shuttle.

These statistics have had plenty of coverage in recent years. And yet in a part of the world that is famous for its love of coffee, single-use cups are still being used in huge numbers, amounting to about 2.7 million being thrown in the bin every day in Australia.

If you run a cafe, healthcare facility, catering company, hotel or anywhere else that serves drinks, you will know why they are still so popular. On many occasions, for reasons of hygiene and convenience, these cups can seem like the only solution for offering hot and cold drinks.

All of which means it’s vital to find and use better disposable alternatives.

That’s where Sustain comes in. Offering a new, innovative disposable paper cup with a water-based barrier coating, the company is set to address the problem head on – and, perhaps, eliminate plastic altogether.

That’s because these cups do not require a standard plastic liner.

Made from unbleached kraft-look paper board with a water-based barrier coating, Sustain’s cups can be composted through commercial composting facilities. The materials used are harvested from responsibly managed, socially beneficial, environmentally conscious and economically viable forests, earning Forest Stewardship Council® certification.

Altogether that means less waste in the ground – and fewer of those scary statistics doing the rounds.