Inside the Current Issue

Corporate Rubbish

Evaluating Restaurant Associates' environmental claims about Styrofoam cups

Lea Johnson

In the May 2005 issue of The Advocate, Charles Hunter replied to Abigail Schoneboom's letter regarding Restaurant Associates' decision to shift from the use of paper to styrofoam cups in the Graduate Center's 365 Cafe. He claimed that Restaurant Associates made a "deliberate and thoughtful decision to go with foam, rather than paper cups." The information he presented as the basis for this "thoughtful" deliberation was based entirely on the website of the Dart Container Company, the world's largest manufacturer of foam cups. Even the citations he listed can be found on the Dart website under "The Basics: Environmental Q&A."

It seems more likely that Mr. Hunter's decision-making was influenced by the fact that twelve-ounce foam cups average three to four cents a cup, while paper ones average six to eleven cents - a question of profit margin, not environmental impact.

What would a "deliberate and thoughtful" examination of the paper versus foam cup question look like? A brief investigation of sources other than the Dart website gives us an idea.

Product Life Cycles

Hunter - and the Dart company website - rely heavily on a 1991 Science policy article by University of Victoria professor Martin B. Hocking to ground the claim that styrofoam cups are more environmentally sound than paper cups. Hocking's comparison of foam and paper cups followed each one through the major stages of its manufacture, from raw materials (petroleum, trees, chemicals, etc.) to finished product.

But in a subsequent issue of Science, both Hocking's methods and the data on which they relied were questioned by other scientists, including the author of one of the papers whose data Hocking used for his calculations. While Hocking's main point is valid - that evaluating the relative environmental impacts of products is complex - his calculations hardly warrant a wholehearted embrace of single-use foam cups.

Product life cycle analysis is a way of accounting for the resources, energy and impacts involved in making a product; however, the relative importance of those impacts is subject to debate. How do you weigh kidney damage versus cancer, or biodiversity loss versus casualties in wars to safeguard oil supply? Even Hocking, in a 1999 paper, discusses the need for complex values frameworks in comparative evaluation of products. One suspects that Dart's publicists forgot to read that one.

What's In My Cup: Polystyrene Foam

Styrofoam, introduced by Dow Chemical in 1937, was the first flexible, moldable plastic foam (today, Dow only wants "Styrofoam" to refer to a blue foam used as building insulation). It is also called polystyrene foam.

Polystyrene's main ingredient, benzene, is a petrochemical that comes from crude oil or coal. The environmental and human costs of the oil and coal industries are numerous and well-documented.

Benzene, a known carcinogen linked to leukemia, is then converted to styrene. New York is among the top 10 states listed by the EPA for toxic emissions of styrene to land and water. Chronic high-level exposure to styrene is associated with liver and nerve tissue damage. According to the EPA, food packaged in polystyrene containers has been found to contain small amounts of styrene. Styrene is chemically linked to form polystyrene, which is then expanded (or "blown") with gas to produce a foam that is approximately 95% air. This high air content is what gives the foam its insulation properties. In the 1970s, expanded polystyrene foam was blown with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were found to result in destruction of the ozone layer. Following public outcry, most polystyrene is now blown with gases not called CFCs (like pentane and HCFCs, which got their "H" after the bad publicity) that may be "less" destructive of ozone because they break down somewhat faster. It is also now blown with pentane and other hydrocarbons that contribute to smog, are highly flammable, and create dangerous workplaces. No polystyrene foam is produced without negative impact on the atmosphere.

What's In My Cup: Paper

A paper hot-drinks cup, on the other hand, begins as a tree - either in an uncut forest (yes, it could be old-growth you're drinking from) or somewhere already converted to a plantation by timber companies - like many of our National Forests. The wood is pulped, bleached, and made into paper; then it is shaped, glued and coated with a plastic to keep liquids from soaking through.

Deforestation destroys habitats - and habitat loss and degradation are the primary causes of the current mass extinction of species. Deforestation is accompanied by soil erosion that takes thousands of years to form; carbon sequestration loss that contributes to global warming; transportation and fossil fuel use; fragmentation of remaining habitat by logging roads; and release and disposal of chemical pollutants used to pulp and then bleach paper to a crisp white. Once the paper is ready to be made into a cup, chemical adhesives are needed to hold the parts of the cup together, and of course the plastic lining.

Rubbish!

Once used and tossed, both cups become a waste disposal problem. Polystyrene and paper are the top materials found as litter. Unlike paper, however, polystyrene does not biodegrade when it blows out of trash cans or is dropped in the street. When it lands in water, it kills the fish, mammals and birds that eat it, mistaking floating plastic particles for food.

While it appears to be true, as Hunter/Dart claim, that polystyrene foam accounts for less than 1% of an average landfill's contents by weight, the amount of space it occupies is greater than its weight would suggest due to its being about 95% air.

Hunter also repeats Dart's assertion that paper cups are always "double-cupped" to keep the customer's tender fingers from being broiled by too-hot contents. While this does occur, it is certainly not always the case, and resting one's analysis of relative impact on doubling one product's environmental cause by assuming double use is disingenuous. There are always those cardboard finger-protectors (increasingly doing double-duty as advertising) that Hunter calls "wasteful" as well - an odd choice of words to defend a throwaway cup.

But What About Recycling?

Hunter - and the Dart FAQ page - cite an article about William Rathje and Cullen Murphy's book Rubbish!: The Archaeology of Garbage, which does discuss positive attributes of foam cups from a specifically waste-disposal angle. However, like Dart, Rathje and Murphy rely on Hocking's paper for much of their argument. Their pro-plastic stance is based on the largely unrealized possibility of plastics recycling.

Polystyrene foam is potentially recyclable, but it is currently recycled in only four states and one Canadian province - and not in New York. Contamination with food, and the low volume of foam present in individual containers, currently make recycling unfeasible.

Plastics are also easily contaminated with other plastic types in the recycling process; the resulting product may not conform exactly to the chemical properties of "virgin" plastics made directly from petrochemicals. Because it is relatively inexpensive (under current subsidies to the petroleum industry) to make fresh plastics to exact specifications, there is little demand for recycled plastics.

Even where plastics are collected for recycling, they often end up at the dump when there is no demand from plastics companies. While the production of plastics stamped with the little recycling triangle has skyrocketed, only 5% of plastics get recycled.

Paper hot-drinks cups are rarely recycled either, although they can be. The plastic lining sprayed onto paper cups to keep liquids from soaking through (imagine wet food on a paper plate at a picnic) is problematic for recyclers, making them more difficult to recycle than uncoated paper.

Both paper and plastics are subject to downcycling in the recycling process; chemical bonds break down each time a product is destroyed, ground, heated and chemically treated. "Virgin" plastic or wood pulp must be added to the mix in order to keep the structural properties of the original product.

So - Paper or Plastic?

According to the EPA, packaging now takes up 30% of landfill space. Packaging is a product itself - one that most people rarely think about - and yet its sale has created large and profitable corporations with the power to lobby against any restrictions on their industry (recall defeats of efforts to expand bottle return laws to include juice and water bottles). Also due to their influence, five-cent bottle returns have not increased since they were instituted thirty-five years ago (back when five cents was more of an incentive).

From an environmental perspective, the simplest option is a re-usable cup. A 1999 Hocking analysis suggests that, in terms of energy use, it takes 500 uses for a re-usable cup to outcompete a plastic one. But even if this is correct, a broader perspective which considers toxicity, waste disposal, chemical pollution of air, soil and water, habitat destruction - as well as the social and political costs associated with single-use products of all kinds - strongly suggests that durable, repairable goods are a more "thoughtfully considered" solution. Few people know that the refrain "reduce, reuse, recycle" is actually in order - of lowest impact. Recycled materials are subject to demand, just like other products. What about cups with post-consumer recycled content?

Will GC students begin toting travel mugs like students at other universities? Will faculty (and others fortunate enough to have an office at the GC) park a mug on their desk and take it downstairs to refill? Maybe, maybe not. As long as we demand single-use products, however, we will also be demanding the problems of their creation, disposal, and long-term effects.

For more, see Rubbish! by William Rathje and Cullen Murphy, Stuff by John Ryan and Alan Durning, and Gone Tomorrow by Heather Rogers.

Lea Johnson holds an MS in Biology and Environmental Science. She is currently finishing an MA in Secondary Science Education at City College.