Reusable cups are better than compostable and here is why…
Those ‘compostable’ cups you keep seeing at festivals, events and markets? Not as compostable as you might think.
Many ‘bioplastics’ i.e. compostable single use cups, need industrial scale composters to be able to break down as they are not accepted by many Councils’ food and green waste services.
Compostable plastics can also contaminate recycling systems, and behave in a similar way to conventional plastics if littered, including our oceans.
With only 150 commercial composting facilities across the whole of Australia, not every council is able to accept plant-based compostable cups, as they need to be selective in what they take.
While one suburb may accept bioplastics, another suburb a few streets down might not. They don’t make it easy do they?
This means compostable cups still create single-use, landfill bound waste.
Australian Council Residential Composting Facilities
NSW: Not accepted
Victoria: Not accepted
South Australia: Accepted in some councils
Queensland: Not accepted
Western Australia: Accepted in some councils
Tasmania: Accepted in some councils
ACT: Not accepted
*The Northern Territory does not have any active FOGO facilities
Out of 562 Australian councils, only 43 accept compostable packaging in their residential compost collections.
An estimated 145,000 tonnes of plastic enters the environment in Australia each year. Plastic packaging is amongst the most harmful – beverage containers make up almost 70% of all plastics alongside soft plastics and food packaging.
What’s wrong with compostable cups:
One of the main types of “compostable” plastics is made from Polylactic acid (PLA, an industrial bioplastic. It is made from corn or sugarcane grown with intensive agricultural practices, which can contribute to ecological issues such as deforestation, water pollution, soil degradation, and loss of biodiversity.
Despite "compostable" products meeting the Australian standard for certification, a University of Queensland study found polylactic acid, a so-called biodegradable plastic, does not degrade in the marine environment for over 428 days.
When plant-based packaging breaks down in landfill, it creates emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas, methane. Methane is 28 to 36 times more potent than CO2.
PLA does not biodegrade at the same speed as other organic materials in composting facilities, which can lead to contamination of the final compost product.
Why reusable cups are better than compostable cups:
The waste management hierarchy lists a preferred order for managing waste, where the most preferred actions are at the top and the least preferred are at the bottom of the inverted pyramid. Avoidance, at the top of the hierarchy, is the most preferred option, while sending waste to landfill is at the bottom.
Before sending waste to landfill, consider opportunities higher up the hierarchy to:
avoid creating waste
reduce the amount of waste you create
reuse waste
recycle waste
generate energy or extract valuable materials from waste
contain waste.
Not only does avoiding landfill have environmental benefits, but it costs less too. Trash ain’t cheap!
One reusable cup can be used a whopping 300 - 500 times, or until it is no longer functional anymore and gets recycled. And 300 - 500 uses also means that far fewer single use cups head to landfill.
According to the Plastic Waste Makers Index, Australians make more than 50 kilograms of plastic waste per person per year – which is more than anywhere else in the world. The need for reusables has never been more necessary.
After all, buying single use cups essentially means we pay, only to throw it away.