Engineering:Paper cup

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Short description: Cup mostly made of paper or card
For the painting by Ellen Gallagher, see Paper Cup (painting).
Plain paper cup.
Insulated paper cup for hot drinks, cut away to show air layer.

A paper cup is a disposable cup made out of paper and often lined or coated with plastic[1][2] or wax to prevent liquid from leaking out or soaking through the paper.[3][4] Disposable cups in shared environments have become more common for hygienic reasons after the advent of the germ theory of disease. Due mainly to environmental concerns, modern disposable cups may be made of recycled paper or other inexpensive materials such as plastic.[5]

History

Paper cups have been documented in imperial China, where paper was invented by the 2nd century BC.[6] Paper cups were known as chih pei and were used for the serving of tea.[7] They were constructed in different sizes and colors, and were adorned with decorative designs. Textual evidence of paper cups appears in a description of the possessions of the Yu family, from the city of Hangzhou.[7]

The modern paper cup was developed in the 20th century. In the early 20th century, it was common to have shared glasses or dippers at water sources such as school faucets or water barrels in trains. This shared use caused public health concerns. One notable investigation into their use was the study by Alvin Davison, biology professor at Lafayette College, published with the sensational title "Death in School Drinking Cups" in Technical World Magazine in August 1908, based on research carried out in Easton, Pennsylvania's public schools. The article was reprinted and distributed by the Massachusetts State Board of Health in November 1909.[8]

Based on these concerns, and as paper goods (especially after the 1908 invention of the Dixie Cup) became cheaply and cleanly available, local bans in the USA were passed on the shared-use cup. One of the first American railway companies to use disposable paper cups was the Lackawanna Railroad, which began using them in 1909. By 1917, the public glass had disappeared from American railway carriages, replaced by paper cups even in jurisdictions around the USA where public glasses had yet to be banned.[9]

Paper cups are also employed in hospitals for health reasons. In 1942 the Massachusetts State College found in one study that the cost of using washable glasses, re-used after being sanitized, was 1.6 times the cost of using single-service paper cups.[10] These studies, as well as the reduction in the risk of cross-infection, encouraged the use of paper cups in American hospitals.

Dixie cups

"Dixie cup" redirects here. For the type of naval headgear, see Sailor cap. For the musical band, see the Dixie Cups.


Dixie Cup Company, Easton, Pennsylvania.

The Dixie Cup was first called "Health Kup", but from 1919 it was named after a line of dolls made by Alfred Schindler's Dixie Doll Company in New York. Success led the company, which had existed under a variety of names, to call itself the Dixie Cup Corporation and move to a factory in Wilson, Pennsylvania. Atop the factory was a large water tank in the shape of a cup.[11]


In 1969, the Dixie Cup logo was created by Saul Bass, a graphic designer known for his motion picture title sequences.[12]

A generalization of the coupon collector's problem, where one needs 2 (or any arbitrary larger number) of each coupon, instead of just 1, is sometimes called the Dixie cup problem; the name is inspired by children trying to collect "a complete set of pictures of baseball players, movie stars, etc., which appear on the covers of dixie cups" and trading with each other as they all try to create a complete set.[13]

Early advertisements

Early advertisement for Dixie Cups when they were still known as Health Kups.[8]
"This is the Sanitary Age" advertisement for Dixie Cups.[8]
Another early advertisement from Dixie.

The tone of many of the advertisements created by the Dixie Cup Company took the form of embracing modern ideals and marketing towards people who wanted to improve their lives and jump on board a new trend for fear of being left behind. "This is the sanitary age – the age of Dixie Cups"[14] was used for several years with success.

Manufacture

The world's largest "paper" cup in front of what was once the Lily-Tulip manufacturing company, later Sweetheart Cup Company.[15] Made of poured concrete, the cup stands about 68.1 feet (20.8 m) tall.

The base paper for paper cups is called "cup board", and is made on special multi-ply paper machines. It has a barrier coating for waterproofing. The paper needs high stiffness and strong wet sizing. The cup board grade has a special design for the cup manufacturing processes. The mouth roll forming process requires good elongation properties of the board and the plastic coating. A well formed mouth roll provides stiffness and handling properties in the cup. The basis weights of the cup boards are 170–350 g/m2.[16]

To meet hygiene requirements, paper cups are generally manufactured from virgin (non-recycled) materials. The one exception to this is when the paper cup features an extra insulating layer for heat retention, which never comes into contact with the beverage, such as a corrugated layer wrapped around a single-wall cup.[citation needed]

Waterproofing

Originally, paper cups for hot drinks were glued together and made waterproof by dropping a small amount of clay in the bottom of the cup, and then spinning at high speed so that clay would travel up the walls of the cup, making the paper water-resistant. However, this resulted in drinks smelling and tasting of cardboard.{{citation needed|date=July 2023}

In 2017, the Finnish board manufacturer Kotkamills launched a new kind of cup (food service) board which uses no wax or plastic for waterproofing, and thus can be recycled as part of the normal paper and board waste stream, biodegraded, or even composted in small quantities.[17]


Paper cups and paper bags made from "Pinyapel", paper made from discarded pineapple leaves, were introduced in 2019. The water-resistant food packaging alternative material was developed by a consortium made up of the Department of Trade and Industry Design Center of the Philippines (DCP), Cagayan de Oro Handmade Paper, Nature's Fresh, and Ideatechs Packaging Corporation. The innovation was a Wood Pencil Awardee in the 2019 edition of the annual D&AD Future Impact Awards.[18] Tests by the DCP show that the 55.32 percent mass loss of Pinyapel in four weeks is much higher than the 21.33 percent mass loss in commercial paper bags, giving evidence that the material decomposes faster than other paper products.[19]

Printing on paper cups

Other methods of printing have been used for short runs such as offset printing, which can vary within a range from 10,000 to 100,000 cups. Offset printing inks have also been developed and although in the past these were solvent based, the latest soya-based inks have reduced the danger of cups smelling. The latest development is Direct-printing, which allows printing on very small quantities, typically from 1,000 cups, and is used by companies including Brendos Ltd offering small quantities in short lead times. Rotogravure can also be used, but this is extremely expensive and is normally only utilised for items requiring extremely high quality printing like ice cream containers.[20]

Environmental impact

Recycling

A US company, Smart Planet Technologies has developed a new coating on paper cups and folding cartons called EarthCoating so they are certified universally recyclable in conventional paper recycling systems. Paper cups with EarthCoating have received the highest "AAA" rating for recycling from Der Grune Punkt (The Green Dot), a certifying body for recycling in the EU, for recycling in Class 13 bales along with office paper. Smart Planet Technologies' licensee Detpak, along with paper-shredder Shred-X have set up commercial recycling systems for paper cups with EarthCoating, branded "RecycleMe", used in recycled paper products such as copy paper, gift wrap, and paper bags. Detpak declared the takeaway cup problem solved in Australia.[21] Subsequently, Australia's Department of Defense, along with globally-recognized recycler Veolia, have teamed up to recycle the department's paper cups, as part of their "War on Waste".[22]

In 2017, the Finnish board manufacturer Kotkamills launched a new kind of cup (food service) board which uses no wax or plastic for waterproofing, and thus can be recycled as part of the normal paper and board waste stream, biodegraded, or even composted in small quantities.[17]

The manufacture of paper usually requires inorganic chemicals and creates water effluents. Paper cups may consume more non-renewable resources than cups made of polystyrene foam (whose only significant effluent is pentane).[23][24]

Paper vs plastic

A life cycle inventory of a comparison of paper vs plastic cups shows environmental effects of both with no clear winner.[25]

Polyethylene (PE) is a petroleum-based coating on paper cups that can slow down the process of biodegrading of the paper it coats.[26]

Polylactic acid (PLA) is a biodegradable bio-plastic coating used on some paper cups. PLA is a renewable resource and is certified compostable in industrial composting facilities, which means that when it biodegrades, it does not leave behind any toxic residues.[27] Although PLA-lined cups are the only paper cups which can be composted fully, they can contaminate the waste stream, reportedly making other recycled plastics unsaleable.[28]

Before 2012, paper cups could only be recycled at a specialized treatment facility regardless of the lining.[29]

A number of cities – including Portland, Oregon — have banned XPS foam cups in take-out and fast food restaurants.[30]

Emissions

A study of one paper coffee cup with sleeve (16 ounce / 500 ml) shows that the level of CO2 emissions is about 0.253 kilograms (0.56 lb) per cup with sleeve – including paper from trees, materials, production, and shipping.[31]

Habitat-loss trees used

The habitat loss from one 16 ounce paper coffee cup with a sleeve is estimated to be 0.09 square meters (0.93 square feet). [32] Over 6.5 million trees were cut down to make 16 billion paper coffee cups used by U.S. in 2006, using 4 billion US gallons (15,000,000 m3) of water and resulting in 253 million pounds (115,000,000 kg) of waste. Overall, US Americans use 58% of all paper cups worldwide, amounting to 130 billion cups.[33] </ref>[unreliable source?]

Lids

A paper coffee cup with a plastic lid and "splash stick".

Paper cups may have various types of lids. The paper cups that are used as containers for yogurt, for example, generally have two types of lids: heat-seal foil lids used for small "single serving" containers, and 150–200 ml (5–7 US fl oz) plastic press-on, resealable lids used for large "family size" containers, 250–1,000 ml (8–30 US fl oz), where not all of the yogurt may be consumed at any one time and thus the ability to re-close the container is required.[34]

Hot drinks sold in paper cups may come with a plastic lid, to keep the drink hot and prevent spillage. These lids have a hole through which the drink can be sipped. The plastic lids can have many features including peel back tabs, raised walls to protect the foam of gourmet hot drinks and embossed text.[35] In 2008, Starbucks introduced shaped plastic "splash sticks" to block the hole, in some of their stores, after customer complaints about hot coffee splashing through it.[36][37][38]

References

  1. ↑ "Take-out coffee cups may be shedding trillions of plastic nanoparticles, study says" (in en). UPI. https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2022/05/06/to-go-coffee-cups-trillions-plastic-nanoparticles/4821651596271/. 
  2. ↑ Zangmeister, Christopher D.; Radney, James G.; Benkstein, Kurt D.; Kalanyan, Berc (3 May 2022). "Common Single-Use Consumer Plastic Products Release Trillions of Sub-100 nm Nanoparticles per Liter into Water during Normal Use" (in en). Environmental Science & Technology 56 (9): 5448–5455. doi:10.1021/acs.est.1c06768. ISSN 0013-936X. PMID 35441513. Bibcode: 2022EnST...56.5448Z. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.1c06768. 
  3. ↑ Kennedy, Garry: Dixie Cup entry, Apollo Glossary, NASA. Retrieved 2012-02-06.
  4. ↑ "Paper Products & Dispensers". Toiletpaperworld.com. http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/tpw/product.asp?strSku=SCC+P510J&bShowSkuGroup=true. 
  5. ↑ Raloff, Janet (2006-02-11). "Wind Makes Food Retailers Greener". Science News. https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/food-for-thought/wind-makes-food-retailers-greener. 
  6. ↑ Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin (1985). Joseph Needham. ed. Paper and Printing. Science and Civilisation in China, Chemistry and Chemical Technology. 5 part 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 38. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Joseph Needham (1985). Science and Civilisation in China: Paper and Printing. Cambridge University Press. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-521-08690-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=Lx-9mS6Aa4wC&pg=PA122. "At this time tea was served from baskets made of rushes which held... a set of several tens of paper cups (chih pei) in different sizes and colors with delicate designs" 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "Dixie Cup Company History". Lafayette College Libraries. August 1995. http://academicmuseum.lafayette.edu/special/dixie/company.html. 
  9. ↑ White, John H. (1985) [1978]. The American Railroad Passenger Car. 2. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 432. ISBN 978-0-8018-2747-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=RAidPrpZUNQC. 
  10. ↑ Beulah France (February 1942). "Uses for Paper Cups and Containers". The American Journal of Nursing 42 (2): 154–156. doi:10.2307/3416163. 
  11. ↑ Former Dixie Cup Factory, Wilson, Pa (photograph)
  12. ↑ Lewis, Andy (November 8, 2011). "Movie and Logo Designer Saul Bass Celebrated with Book, MoMA Event". The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/saul-bass-designer-moma-258891/. 
  13. ↑ Newman, Donald J.; Shepp, Lawrence (1960), "The double dixie cup problem", American Mathematical Monthly 67 (1): 58–61, doi:10.2307/2308930, https://gwern.net/doc/statistics/order/1960-newman.pdf 
  14. ↑ "Whistlin' Dixie: Marketing the Paper Cup, 1910-1960". https://sites.lafayette.edu/dixieexhibit/. 
  15. ↑ "Lily-Tulip Cup Corporation, Springfield-Greene County Library, Springfield, Missouri". http://thelibrary.springfield.missouri.org/lochist/postcards/lily-tulip_cup_corporation.cfm. 
  16. ↑ Savolainen, Antti (1998). "6". Paper and Paperboard Converting. Papermaking Science and Technology. 12. Finland: Fapet OY. pp. 170–172. ISBN 978-952-5216-12-7. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Suomalainen yritys teki sen – kahvin, rasvan ja oluen kestävät muovittomat ihmepahvit lähtevät maailmalle: "Kiinnostus on valtavaa"". YLE. https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-9717592. 
  18. ↑ "Pinoy-made 'Pinyapel' wins environment and sustainability award in New York". 30 October 2019. https://www.abs-cbn.com/life/10/30/19/pinoy-made-pinyapel-wins-environment-and-sustainability-award-in-new-york. 
  19. ↑ "Filipinos Made This Plastic-Free Cup From Pineapple Leaves". https://www.vice.com/en/article/filipino-plastic-free-cup-packaging-pineapple-leaves-paper/. 
  20. ↑ "Rotogravure Printing for Ice Cream Containers". https://luxpackgcc.com/rotogravure-printing-for-ice-cream-containers/. 
  21. ↑ "Detpak - Takeaway Cup Recycling Solved in Australia" (in en). https://www.detpak.com/news-and-events/latest-news/takeaway-cup-recycling-solved-in-australia/. 
  22. ↑ "Veolia and Defence join together to eliminate single-use disposable cups" (in en). https://www.veolia.com/anz/newsroom/veolia-and-defence-join-together-eliminate-single-use-disposable-cups. 
  23. ↑ Don R. Hansen; Maryanne M. Mowen (2005). Management Accounting: The Cornerstone of Business Decisions. Thomson South-Western. p. 503. ISBN 978-0-324-23484-8. 
  24. ↑ Chris T. Hendrickson; Lester B. Lave; H. Scott Matthews (2006). Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Goods and Services: An Input-output Approach. Resources for the Future. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-933115-23-8. 
  25. ↑ Hocking, M. B. (1 February 1991). "Paper Versus Polystyrene: A Complex Choice". Science 251 (4993n): 504–5. doi:10.1126/science.251.4993.504. PMID 17840849. Bibcode: 1991Sci...251..504H. 
  26. ↑ "PE Paper Coating". https://mars-paper.com/pe-coated-paper/. 
  27. ↑ "Composting". http://www.natureworksllc.com/The-Ingeo-Journey/End-of-Life-Options/Composting. 
  28. ↑ "Sustainable bio-plastic can damage the environment". 25 April 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/apr/26/waste.pollution. 
  29. ↑ "Paper Cup Recycling". http://www.save-a-cup.co.uk/paper_cups.php. 
  30. ↑ Helfrich, M. William; Sanders, Justin Wescoat (2003-08-13). "The Coming Cup-tastrophe". The Portland Mercury. http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=29552&category=34029. 
  31. ↑ "Report of the Alliance for Environmental Innovation". edf.com. http://www.edf.org/documents/523_starbucks.pdf. 
  32. ↑ "ecological effects of a paper cup". ecofx.org. http://ecofx.org/wiki/index.php?title=Paper_cup. 
  33. ↑ "Paper Cups = Unsustainable Consumption". aboutmyplanet.com. http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/environment/paper-unsustainable/. 
  34. ↑ Adman Y. Tamime; Richard K. Robinson (1999). Yoghurt: science and technology. Woodhead Publishing. p. 97. ISBN 978-1-85573-399-2. 
  35. ↑ "The Rise of the Plastic, Disposable Coffee Cup Lid". The Atlantic. 9 May 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/the-rise-of-the-plastic-disposable-coffee-cup-lid/238573/. 
  36. ↑ "Starbucks splash stick says no to sploshing". USA Today. 14 March 2008. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/advertising/adtrack/2008-04-13-ad-track_N.htm. 
  37. ↑ Johnson, Steve (11 March 2016). "Solving the mystery of Starbucks little green sticks". Chicago Tribune. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-starbucks-little-green-sticks-mystery-solved-20160311-column.html. 
  38. ↑ "Example of awareness campaign for availability of splash sticks". JustGiving. 19 October 2015. https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Hotstopper. 

Bibliography



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