Production of biodegradable products is increasing as consumers become more aware and concerned about the impact of their purchasing decisions.
Looking at the chart below, we can see that global production capacity and planned capacity of biodegradable and recyclable plastics from 2015-2020 has accelerated significantly.
However, while consumers are making conscious purchasing decisions, Blue Bottle CEO, Bryan Meehan, was concerned to discover that their choice of biodegradable products was not being composted. Here is what he said on the issue recently on their blog
“And at Blue Bottle, we’re not afraid to admit that we’re part of the problem. We recently woke up to the fact that our beautiful bioplastic cups and straws were not being composted even though they were 100 percent compostable. Too many ended up in landfills, where they couldn’t break down at all. So we switched to paper straws and sugarcane-paper cups. But that’s still not enough. We still go through on average 15,000 disposable single-use cups per cafe per month in the US alone, which adds up to 12 million cups per year. We want to show our guests and the world that we can eliminate disposable cups as we serve our delicious coffee.”
Together as an industry, we should all be asking ourselves the same question and ensuring all parties in the supply chain are doing what they should, or like Blue Bottle Coffee, changing our strategy and materials to achieve a positive environmental impact.
