London - A British design expert has developed a coffee cup - the Frugalpac - that can be recycled rather than dumped.
Martin Myerscough developed the design two years ago and is now about to begin production at a factory in Ireland.
“I always thought it was such a waste that disposable coffee cups couldn’t be easily recycled,” he said. “In these times of limited resources and diminishing landfill space, a single use cup that can’t be recycled is an indulgence we just cannot afford. We hope that Frugalpac will become standard in the booming coffee industry so that we can put an end to this shocking environmental shame.”
He said the problem with existing mass produced coffee cups, which are made out of virgin cardboard, is that they have a very thin plastic film that is bonded very tightly to it. “A normal recycling plant cannot separate out the plastic, which means it contaminates the process,” he said
His system involves making a cup from recycled food grade card and then adding a plastic liner, which is stuck inside.
When this goes through a normal paper recycling plant with newspapers and other waste, the plastic liner is removed by the filters. Independent tests have shown that his cups can be processed as part of normal waste paper, which means they can be recycled and re-used many times over.
While it sounds simple, this mini-revolution in paper cup manufacturing could save millions of pounds as well as paper. Mr Myerscough said: “We estimate 25 000 tons of paper in the UK every year would be saved and recycled.”
Significantly, the cups produced using his system cost exactly the same as those currently available in the high street when manufactured in large numbers.
Daily Mail