Coffee to go without a guilty conscience

Up to 8 million cups and lids are thrown away by coffee-to-go drinkers in Switzerland every day. Almost 15% of the coffee drunk in Switzerland is consumed from to-go cups. And the trend is rising.

Mr Adrian Gübeli, CEO of PAKK®, claims "yes, with our products, coffee to go is possible without a guilty conscience!" We wanted to find out more and asked Mr Gübeli 4 questions.

GreenPAKK® cups, double-walled made from plant-based raw materials with a recyclable plastic lid.

You claim that coffee-to-go is possible without a guilty conscience with products from Handelgrün? Can you briefly explain this to us?

Not without a guilty conscience is not entirely true. Every disposable cup leaves an ecological footprint, including our GreenPAKK® disposable cups. Regionally organised reusable cups or completely different coffee to go solutions would certainly be the best solution for ecological disposable consumption. And there are some interesting approaches here.

GreenPAKK® Butterfly cup

GreenPAKK® Butterfly cups are made from plant-based raw materials and are fully compostable. The raw materials used are 100% ecological and sustainable. The inner coating consists of water dispersion without plastic. Like the other components, it can be fully composted* or recycled together with newspapers and leaflets with the waste paper. The highlight of these cups is that they no longer have a plastic lid. This is cleverly integrated into the cup.

^{*The GreenPAKK® Butterfly cups can be completely biodegraded in an industrial composting plant within 30 to 90 days.}

Wait a minute!

We would like to know more about this. You don't need plastic lids for your new disposable cups. That is certainly a step forward. But are disposable cups coated on the inside and cannot be recycled at all? Is that not the case for you?

That's right, the lids of the GreenPAKK® cups are integrated into the cup and are comparable to normal plastic lids, they have a drinking opening and seal the cup. This allows us to massively reduce the environmental impact of a to-go cup. Two thirds of this impact can be attributed to the plastic lid.

And we can even dispense with the coating. Our latest technology makes it possible to dispense with all coatings. We use a coating made from water dispersion without plastic or a coating made from plant-based components. The resulting cups can simply be thrown into the waste paper. This makes them 100% recyclable. All raw materials are FSC-certified and come exclusively from sustainable forest utilisation.

GreenPAKK® Butterfly cup for cold drinks (single-walled)

GreenPAKK® Butterfly cup for hot drinks (double-walled)

A sturdy to-go cup

Shouldn't we just buy a sturdy to-go cup and always have it with us? Then we could do without disposable cups altogether.

In theory, that's true. However, we must not forget that the customer inevitably shares responsibility for hygiene in the catering trade. Please wash up. But who knows what harmful intestinal bacteria or other disgusting invisible pathogens are romping around on the cup they have brought with them?

Clean and safe?

The German Food Association has published a Leaflet and a Video that makes the issue clear:

We are of the opinion that if reusable, then reusable without compromise.

The environmental balance

The more centrally the reusable cup depots are organised, the longer the transport routes and the worse the environmental balance. The quality of the cleaning agent plays a very important role here and can significantly worsen the environmental balance. An example to illustrate this problem: In Jakobspark in Basel, reusable cups have been used for several years. These are transported to St. Gallen for cleaning. Is that ecological?

Source Quarks.de