Many people are getting in the habit of asking themselves whether the product they are about to purchase is the most environmentally friendly version of what they need. It’s a laudable practice given the many alternatives that are often available, and the tremendous impact millions of consumers can have by making simple, sustainable swaps in their buying routines.
What is the most environmentally friendly disposable container? What is the most environmentally friendly disposable cup? What is the most environmentally friendly disposable bottle? Hundreds of billions of these simple products are sold around the world every year – about 25% of them in the U.S. alone. What Americans choose to put into their physical and online shopping carts has a huge impact on what happens later to our environment.
In the case of the most environmentally friendly disposable cups, let’s look at what’s going on nowadays. Spoiler alert: the correct answer to this question is disposable aluminum cups.
America uses 125 billion disposable plastic cups of all sizes every year. A staggering amount of single-use plastic when you consider that it hangs around the Earth for 500-1,000 years before it finally breaks down. This amount of usage works out to about 37 disposables per month, per adult. Of course, kids use them too, but generally because their parents choose them.
Those are cups of soda at the café and cups of beer at the ballpark and cups of coffee at your favorite to-go spot and cups of smoothies after the gym and cups of water almost everywhere. It’s actually pretty staggering when you realize how many times we order or reach for a drink, and reflexively pull a single-use cup for it.
Virtually all those plastic cups that you’ve ever used since you were a kid are still hanging around somewhere – in a landfill, on the ground in some open parkland or, worst of all, floating around in the ocean, where massive swirling trash islands exist in the middle of five of our seas. Plastic isn’t an environmentally friendly material because it’s impractical to recycle it and most recycling centers don’t bother to.
On the other hand, they love to recycle aluminum. They recycle more aluminum every year than any other recyclable material you throw away. More than glass. More than paper. And about 15x more than single-use plastic. Why is that? Because aluminum lasts forever and can be used in so many products and be formed into so many useful things. It is infinitely recyclable and has great value to manufacturers. Plastic, not so much. That stuff can be recycled once or maybe twice, and diminishes in quality each time – becoming less and less useful. The habit there is to toss out the old and just start over with new supplies.
Aluminum is as strong the 100th time you recycle it as it is the 1st time. It uses 5% of the energy during that recycling process as required when it was first made, and it’s so valuable that even if it ends up in the wrong trash bin, there’s a good chance it will be plucked out by a sorting machine for recycling. This makes it the most environmentally friendly disposable cup by far.
What else makes it the most environmentally friendly disposable cup? It isn’t capable of doing harm to the environment, animals or people if it starts to break down in the wild. Whereas plastic simply turns into smaller and smaller bits – known as micro- and nano-plastic – that enter our lungs and food supply with toxic effects, aluminum is a naturally occurring material that simply returns to the ground from which it came. Animals aren’t attracted to it, and people won’t be affected by it either.
Another reason aluminum cups are the most environmentally friendly disposable cups on the market is their superior performance as cold drinker holders. Aluminum cups keep drinks cold 70% longer than a single-use plastic cup will. That means your ice doesn’t melt as fast, your drink doesn’t get watered down as fast and it isn’t likely to warm up before you have a chance to finish it. Aluminum disperses heat away from it’s source, keeping it from warming up your beverage. Plastic concentrates heat at its source, becoming like a hot spot against your drink.
Where does it get a little confusing when deciding on the most environmentally friendly disposable cup? Paper. If there’s one thing we all know and have been told for ages, it’s that paper is recyclable. One exception to that rule, however, is paper cups. Paper can’t actually hold water by itself. Paper cups are made with an interior plastic lining to keep liquid from leaking out. That plastic liner renders the paper in that cup unrecyclable. At some future point while it’s deteriorating in a landfill, the paper fibers will biodegrade, but the plastic liner will remain behind for the same 500-1,000 years, slowly breaking down into micro- and nano-plastics.
If you’re looking for a product that is genuinely the most environmentally friendly disposable cup, there really is but one choice – an infinitely recyclable aluminum cup that performs better, is healthier for the planet, and will make you feel good about your purchase decision with every cool sip.
