Tully’s new cups prove being green ain’t easy
Early yesterday morning, rushing to work and in dire need of caffeine, I stopped at the drive-thru at Tully’s headquarters on Airport Way and ordered a triple Americano (dire, indeed). Having waited the requisite four hours for it to cool, I sipped my coffee and slowly came to life when a bright green logo on the side of the cup caught my eye. It simply read, Ecotainer™. Ecotainer? “Oh, bullshit,” I said (to the cup). “This is just another deceitful marketing ploy by a company trying to jump on the Green Bandwagon.” But, in the interest of verifying the legitimacy of my skepticism, I decided to do something inadvisable for the average blogger: Research.
[more after the jump]
The difference between Tully’s new Ecotainer cup, made by International Paper [i-p], and a regular paper cup (say, from Starbucks) is described thusly:
A corn-based polylactic acid resin [wiki] from NatureWorks LLC is modified by DaniMer Scientific to create a new material that can be applied to paperboard to create a water-resistant barrier. This new material replaces the petrochemical plastic used in standard packaging today.
Ok, so you’re painting the inside of my cup with a polylactic acid resin instead of a petrochemcial plastic? Is this like biodiesel for coffee cups? For some reason, my skepticism hasn’t waned. Now let’s hear from Tully’s [#] about the effect using these cups will have on the accumulation of waste [i-p]:
…Tully’s has also partnered with local compost and recycling organizations to establish the first waste management program of its kind. It is estimated that as a result, more than 70 percent of food and packaging waste from Tully’s retail stores will now be diverted from local landfills. Cedar Grove Organics will collect and compost Washington Tully’s new green cup at local facilities in Everett and Maple Valley.
Apparently, using a different chemical to coat the inside of the cup makes it compostable. This can’t be a bad thing. Yeah, the trademarked logo is a little grating and has the effect of pinning my BS meter to the extreme right, but hey, a better cup is a better cup, right? However, I think it’s best to let a real expert have the last word. Here’s what Eric de Place of Sightline Institute (and frequent contributor to Sightline’s excellent blog The Daily Score) had to say when I asked him whether these cups are for real or for show:
I can’t say for sure whether this is mostly good or mostly BS. While it’s probably wise to be skeptical, my hunch is that this is mostly a good thing – and by “good thing” I mean it’s better than what was happening before. Furthermore, even if it is mostly or partly corporate greenwashing, I’m okay with that. There’s a much longer conversation to be had here, of course, but I believe that the more corporations market themselves as green the more they a) reinforce the “green is good” message; and b) push their competitors into striving for green systems, or at least green marketing. On this last point, it could turn out that the best thing that comes out of their aggressive green marketing is pushing certain corporate coffee competitors to step up in a similar fashion, lest they lose market share to greenish consumers.
Having said all that, I don’t think coffee cup waste is one of the big issues of our time. And yet… since Tully’s finds themselves in the coffee cup business, and coffee cup waste does happen, I’m glad to see them taking a step in the right direction. So I’ll take it.
And now for a little nitpicking. Here’s a quote from the press release you linked to: “Unlike conventional paper cups that are lined with a petrochemical plastic to prevent leaking, the Ecotainer™ hot cup is lined with a bio-plastic made from a renewable resource – corn. This coating material requires less energy to manufacture and is greenhouse gas neutral.” I’ll buy the part about less energy, and therefore less ghg emissions. But greenhouse gas neutral? I highly doubt it. Corn production is miles away from ghg neutral, and simply composting the processed corn-based material won’t make it so. Not even close. So unless they’re doing something else – offsets maybe – there’s pretty much no way in hell the liner is “greenhouse gas neutral.”
Also, “ecotainer” must be the most annoying “word” I’ve encountered lately. It sounds like a unicycle-riding environmentalist juggler. Now that’s ecotainment.
So, there you have it. I think Kermit has been right all along.
Tully’s is finally taking a step toward separating themselves from Starbucks, when this whole time they’re plan has been to be just like them. Obviously that hasn’t been working. Now I’d just like to see them liven up that menu and atmosphere of theirs. SO cookie cutter and boring!
oh sheesh. i’m sleepwalking at work today after halloween night… i meant THEIR plan.
and i call myself a writer.
Actually, it was big news last winter when Starbucks finally got the FDA to approve recycled paper for beverage cups. I don’t know whether they’re still using petrochemical lining goop (I’m not a big coffee drinker, and I tend to skip disposable cups when I do); I imagine they are, or they’d be trumpeting about it. But still, they’re greener than you give them credit for, and they are big enough that they got the FDA to change its stance on something, which should open up the recycled cup market to smaller companies.
You might want to ask at least one more question but there are more than the one. Since PLA can breakdown in an industrial compost facility (not in your backyard compost even though this is rarely mentioned on all of these items promoted as compostable and it is heat that is at the heart of this process, how does the PLA lining/coating protect the paper cup from the hot coffee that is higher in temperature than the compost? Well, it won’t. What they are not really telling anybody in any overt way is that it isn’t entirely PLA. You see, the PLA is blended with that most ghastly of substances; petro-based plastic. Ah, just a minor detail lost in the euphoria.
Eric de Place is right on the GHG nuetral claim. The energy statement appears to be accurate but the impression is that the paper cup with this coating uses less energy as a whole than an alternative when it is only using less energy than a paper cup with a polyethylene coating. If you do more research you will find that those paper cups take a lot more energy to produce than a well-known alternative which just happens to be evil incarnate when it comes to environmental PC.
And ask yourself this last question; ” Am I or even a modest number of those who bought the coffee and drank it anywhere other than in the Tlly’s store planning to carry it back to the store for disposal?” If not, where for are those destined? The same place and with the same results.
But hey, we feel better.
Good points, Bryant.
NatureWorks is doing offsets for the carbon gas neutrality, but they are also using GM corn. Corn itself is a whole nightmare that is too big to cover here. One thing good though is that NatureWorks has an offset program that they don’t seem to advertise. If you take part in (pay for) the offset program, they will buy an equivalent amount of non-GM corn to match the corn they are using for your PLA. Barely any US buyers are taking part in this but it is automatically added to all European orders. Or so I have been told by them. When I called and asked about the whole GMO “problem” they told me I was the first North American manufacturer to even ask about it. If more people knew about it and took part in it, we would be doing more for the anti-GMO movement then people who are just avoiding PLA (see Patagonia’s recent ad).