Learned that most coffee cups aren't actually recyclable and it bugged me all day

I was cleaning out my truck yesterday and had a pile of those paper coffee cups from Dunkin. I always thought they were good to toss in the recycling bin, no problem. Then my buddy who works at the recycling center in town told me most of them have a thin plastic lining inside that makes them basically garbage. He said something like 99% of them end up in a landfill anyway because the lining is too hard to separate. I looked it up on my phone and sure enough, it's true. Now I'm sitting here looking at my morning cup feeling like a dummy for all the ones I've thrown in the blue bin over the years. Has anyone found a coffee cup brand that actually recycles right without a hassle?

2 comments

2 Comments

wren_walker628d ago

Gotta disagree a little here. I mean yeah the plastic lining thing is a pain, but most paper cups are technically recyclable if you have a facility that handles them. There's a place near me that takes them no problem.

blair_lewis858d ago

And that's the thing, right? The "technically recyclable" part is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Most people don't have a specialized facility near them, so those cups just end up in the regular trash anyway. It's like how pizza boxes are technically recyclable until there's grease on them, then they're garbage. I wish companies would just standardize their designs so we don't have to be recycling experts just to throw away a coffee cup. It feels like they're passing the burden onto us instead of fixing it themselves.