Next time you grab a Robert Harris takeaway coffee, have
a closer look at the cup.
It’s commercially compostable – another way we’re giving landfill a kick in the pants. Of course, our cafes welcome and encourage you to bring your own reusable cup (we sell them too). But for those times you ‘whoops, left it in the car’, you’ll be handed a sustainably-minded takeaway cup.
COMPOSTABLE COFFEE CUPS
Next time you grab a Robert Harris takeaway coffee, have
a closer look at the cup.
Compostable cups sound all very ‘green fingers’, but there’s a bunch of science involved. Ours are made from sustainably-sourced paper, and the lining (and lid) is PLA… an organic plastic produced from vegetables. We use PLA because it’s robust and non-leaky – no one enjoys tasty hot coffee in their lap. Plus, PLA can be broken down into organic elements.
What exactly is
commercially compostable?
It means our cups need to go to a purpose-made facility for composting – rather than your backyard compost heap. This is largely because the composting process requires higher temperatures to properly break everything down. At the moment, there are 12 commercial composting operations in New Zealand – and growing. Some you can drop off to directly or even sign up for home collection. While it’s not the perfect solution for everyone just yet, we’re hopeful it’ll get better over time.