Ask HN: Would a disposable metal cup be totally out of the question? Something like a coke can without the ring pull lid?
With a lip around the rim I can't imagine them being any more flimsy than paper cups. The lid and sleeve could be 100% biodegradable since their time of contact with hot liquids is minimal, and the cups themselves could have a 25c/p deposit scheme to dissuade litter/promote collection of discarded cups.
They must be cheap enough to produce en mass for coke/Pepsi et al, and I recently learnt that metal cans are apparently much better for the environment than plastic since they can apparently be recycled nearly an infinite amount of times (easy to mechanically sort too) compared to plastic and paper that can only be recycled a handful of times before degrading too much for reuse.
Just looked on Alibaba and you can get reusable rigid steel cups for less than a dollar a piece in quantities of 1000. Seems like the price for single-use recyclable steel/ALU cups getting gown to the 17-20c (apparently what a paper cup costs) range would not be out of the question?
Paper cups are hot to hold too - I don't think 0.5mm of paper is a particularly great insulator, at least in my experience. A 100% biodegradable and easily removable (not glued) cardboard sleeve would do the trick like it does with a paper cup I reckon.
With a lip around the rim I can't imagine them being any more flimsy than paper cups. The lid and sleeve could be 100% biodegradable since their time of contact with hot liquids is minimal, and the cups themselves could have a 25c/p deposit scheme to dissuade litter/promote collection of discarded cups.
They must be cheap enough to produce en mass for coke/Pepsi et al, and I recently learnt that metal cans are apparently much better for the environment than plastic since they can apparently be recycled nearly an infinite amount of times (easy to mechanically sort too) compared to plastic and paper that can only be recycled a handful of times before degrading too much for reuse.
Just looked on Alibaba and you can get reusable rigid steel cups for less than a dollar a piece in quantities of 1000. Seems like the price for single-use recyclable steel/ALU cups getting gown to the 17-20c (apparently what a paper cup costs) range would not be out of the question?