Our problem with takeaway cups
We guzzle our way through 295 million takeaway cups a year. Most can’t be recycled and end up in landfill. Leith Huffadine investigates.
New Zealanders have been seeking instant gratification and convenience for coffee since the 1800s.
The first patent for commercial instant coffee was applied for in 1889 by Invercargill man David Strang, who owned a coffee and spice works factory.
Kiwi Derek Townsend claims to have ‘‘invented’’ the flat white – although that’s a highly contested point.
Perhaps it’s no surprise we have a takeaway coffee culture.
So here’s the problem. There are 295 million hot and cold cups (like the ones you get your soft drink in at a fast food restaurant) used in New Zealand every year. That’s just less than 63 takeaway cups per person, per year. Most go to landfill.
The Huhtamaki Group, which distributes a large amount of the disposable cups available in New Zealand, sources its raw timber materials in Russia, according to an Otago Polytechnic study.
The timber is transported to Sweden to be pulped and then to Auckland to be manufactured into disposable cups.
Those cups are then transported for use in Dunedin, another 1500 kilometres away.
‘‘And despite the vast embodied energy, the cups are typically used for only a few minutes within the campus,’’ an Otago Polytechnic report said.
Its author, Tim Lynch, said: ‘‘The life span of [a cup’s] usage is less than 10 minutes and [they were] being disposed of less than 50 metres from where they were being purchased’’.
All coffee purchased at the campus cafe was sold in a takeaway cup, yet less than 10 per cent of it was taken away – or consumed outside the campus.
That cafe, the Eden Cafe, decided it would stop using takeaway cups. It switched to reusable cups in February 2016.
It estimated it had diverted about 35,000 cups from landfill by July 2017 by stopping using takeaway cups.
New Zealand has developed a takeaway culture, even if we don’t really need it.
And even when we do try to recycle or compost cups, we’re often still causing a problem. There’s a huge amount of confusion about what works, where and how.
Disposable cups are commonly mistaken to be recyclable.
In reality, most are lined with plastic that must be separated from the cup in order to be recycled. Doing so is often so complex and costly it doesn’t get done.
It’s a complex issue and it involves our takeaway culture, what cups are made from, how they’re dealt with, and a lack of education or awareness.
A lot of people are working very hard to change the situation.
This is part one of a five-part series looking at the issue of takeaway coffee cups.