Fresh Cup Magazine; The Green Café, April 2004

Of Cyberchats and Composted Cups
By Mark Inman

As you most likely know, the Roaster's Guild Web site (www.roastersguild.org) houses one of the most lively bulletin boards anywhere in the coffee world. If you are not familiar with this site, I would suggest having a look. At times, you will find extremely engaging and provocative discussions about the state of our industry from every level within the coffee sector. Most discussion topics eventually have some form of definitive closure, or at the very least, an agreement to disagree. There are other times, however, when a topic has no clear resolution, leaving the participants more frustrated than when they logged in. As most participants in this bulletin board know, I will post, respond, argue and politic on any number of topics that involve sustainability. A recent post that started out as a pretty straightforward question sparked a lengthy and unresolved debate, such that it became my topic for this month’s Green Café column.

The question posted was one that seems relatively benign, or at least somewhat simple. It has been talked about ad nauseam but has yet to be answered adequately: “Which is the best way to take your coffee for the road: paper, foam, paper jacket, double cup, or insulated cup?” The person posting this question clearly was frustrated with the lack of viable solutions to this seemingly soluble dilemma, and had come to the Roaster’s Guild site looking for answers. Postings ranged from discussions of the historical paper vs. foam argument and orations on the importance of encouraging customers to use their own cups to rants about our disposable society and inspired calls to re-introduce in-house porcelain cups and create more environmentally sound disposable packaging. In short, nobody was able to provide a clear solution. The final synopsis looked something like this: “The current offerings in to-go packaging are wasteful, toxic and unacceptable.”

A revolution in environmentally sound disposable packaging is desperately needed and it seems that very few people are working on an answer. Supporting the current polyethylene-lined paper cup is synonymous with supporting the destruction of virgin forests, the continued use of chlorine bleaches and an end product that takes over 500 years to de-compose in a landfill. But supporting foam cups, while saving forests from Paul Bunyon’s axe, contributes to the rapid depletion of our ozone layer, to a cup that lasts longer in our landfill than plutonium, and to a proven increase in cancer, endometriosis and fertility problems from the chemicals that leach from polystyrene. The final verdict: arguing the merits of foam vs. paper is similar to arguing Kerry vs. Bush— both are crappy options!

Currently the specialty coffee industry alone uses 3.9 billion polyethylene-lined paper cups per year and it is estimated that the entire food industry uses over 25 billion foam cups annually. We are literally talking about the handling and disposing of a mountain range of cups each year. Increasingly, food and beverage packaging users are challenged by the dual concerns of consumer convenience and environmental protection. Beyond the need for products that contain a significant amount of post-consumer material (to use up some of these mountains), there is an even more pressing need for a cup that is both compostable and biodegradable. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ATSM) defines “Biodegradable” and “Compostable” in the following way:

Biodegradable: a degradable material in which the degradation results from the action of naturally occurring microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi and algae.

Composting: the aerobic and mesophilic and thermophilic degradation of organic matter to make compost; the transformation of biologically decomposable materials through a controlled process of bio-oxidation that proceeds through mesophilic and thermophilic phases and results in the production of carbon dioxide, water, minerals and stabilized organic matter.

What a concept this would be—a cup that actually contributes to the restoration of our ever-decreasing topsoil instead of contributing more to our already overburdened landfills! This is the point where we need the entrepreneurs to step in and offer up working solutions to this problem.

Biodegradable Polymers: Oxymoron or Future Reality?

Cargill-Dow, a joint venture between Cargill Incorporated (an international distributor of agricultural food, financial and industrial products) and the Dow Chemical Company (a producer of industrial plastics) can be credited with sparking the race to produce biodegradable polymers, the base for biodegradable and compostable packaging. Well-funded research labs (and the need to find markets for their vast holdings in Midwestern grain markets) have led to their patented invention of “PLA” or poly-lactic acid, a building block polymer made from a starch that is found in corn and wheat. When PLAs are blended with other biodegradable materials, a myriad of compostable and biodegradable packages can be produced, including: cutlery, cold-drink cups, food-wraps, to-go sacks and garbage bags. All of these products will completely “break down” or compost within 30 to 90 days.

When PLAs first arrived to market, only the hyper-committed “Green” packaging companies created products for the foods market. With the high-costs associated to create PLAs, companies were putting out various products at up to 5 times the price of their petroleum counterparts. Biocorp North America was one of the first companies to offer such products. They have slowly cut costs by blending their own polymers with Cargill-Dow’s PLA. “We were offering biodegradable and compostable cutlery at $60 per box of 1000, compared to petroleum-based cutlery that could be found for anywhere between $8 to $16 per box of 1000,” says Frederic Scheer, President of Biocorp N.A. “We knew that to compete we had to reduce the cost of the raw material and create the product on existing equipment. It was not so much about re-inventing the wheel as it was about putting a different type of tire on that wheel.”

As the other industrial giants raced to enter the PLA market (Dupont, Eastman Chemical, BASF, Mitsui), the prices began to fall to within a competitive band. “Today we are able to create the same cutlery and offer it for as low as $15 per box of 1000. That’s a $45 drop in price in only a few years,” says Scheer. This has enticed companies who desire to be more environmentally responsible to switch to more “Green” alternatives.

While there may be many committed chemical and packaging engineers who envision a “Green” future, most PLA manufacturers are not ecologically driven. In addition to seeking new markets for corn and wheat, this industry is actually being pressured by government entities to have all food and food-related wastes completely compostable and biodegradable in order to lessen the massive impacts on municipal landfills. The beauty of this need to reduce our production of non-degradable food wastes is the realization that food and food-related wastes have value. They can provide the very material necessary to create valuable organic nutrient-rich compost, thereby helping preserve the planet’s dwindling topsoil--the building block of all agriculture. When food wastes and food containers are disposed of in landfills, they are merely “stored” and do not degrade in the way a traditional compost pile regenerates into a highly useful, rich humus product. In essence, the value of this rich waste is lost forever.

Is The End of the Debate In Sight?

While the future is already looking bright for most of the food packaging industry, the future of the “hot cup,” or to-go coffee is not as bright yet.

The challenge for those creating a compostable and biodegradable hot cup is the temperature at which coffee is served. The same heat that is the key to composting is also the factor that, so far, limits the range of applications for biodegradable cups. Coffee is traditionally served at a temperature between 185 and 210 degrees Fahrenheit. The current polymers on the market are designed to begin to break down once temperature hits 150 degrees F. By serving coffee in cups that use these current polymers, you will literally have a cup composting in your hands. “The challenge,” says Frederic Scheer, “is to create a polymer that breaks down at a slower rate, yet still remains compostable.”

Biocorp N.A. is projecting to have a cold paper cup on the market by this printing and a hot-cup, constructed of post-consumer material and lined with a newer biodegradable polymer, by summer. “This cup problem will be solved in weeks, not years,” says Scheer. “Once a packaging company launches a biodegradable cup, the race will be on. This ‘friendly competition’ will push pricing down to competitive levels, leaving coffee companies with little reason not to make the change.”

I look forward to the day that Frederic calls to tell me that his prediction has come true. I also look forward to the day that we will finally have closure to this nagging question.

Mark Inman is the President and co-founder of Taylor Maid Farms, a certified-organic herb-farm and coffee roastery based in Sebastopol, California. You can learn more about Biocorp N.A. at www.biocorpna.com.