A paper cup is a cup made out of paper and often lined with plastic or wax to prevent liquid from leaking out or soaking through the paper.[1][2][3] It may be made of recycled paper[4] and is widely used around the world.
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Early in the 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.[5]
Based on these concerns, and as paper goods (especially after the 1908 invention of the Dixie Cup) became cheaply and cleanly available, local bans were passed on the shared-use cup. One of the first 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 railway carriages, replaced by paper cups even in jurisdictions where public glasses had yet to be banned.[6]
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.[7] These studies, as well as the reduction in the risk of cross-infection, encouraged the use of paper cups in hospitals.
Dixie Cup is the brand name for a line of disposable paper cups that were first developed in the United States in 1907 by Lawrence Luellen, a lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts, who was concerned about germs being spread by people sharing glasses or dippers at public supplies of drinking water. Luellen developed an ice-cooled water-vending machine with disposable cups,[5] and with another Bostonian, Hugh Moore, embarked on an advertising campaign to educate the public and to market his machine, principally to railroad companies. Professor Davison's study was instrumental in abolishing the public glass and opening the door for the paper cup. Soon, the devices, which would dispense cool water for a cent, became standard equipment on trains.
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.[1] Atop the factory was a large billboard in the shape of a cup.
Dixie merged with the American Can Company in 1957. The James River Corporation purchased American Can's paper business in 1982. The assets of James River are now part of Georgia-Pacific, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States. In 1983, production moved to a modern factory in Forks, Pennsylvania. The original factory in Wilson has sat vacant ever since. The closing of the factory also prompted Conrail to abandon the Easton & Northern railroad branch, of which Dixie Cups was the last major customer.
The Dixie Cup logo was created in 1969 by Saul Bass, a graphic designer known for his motion picture title sequences.
The base paper for paper cups are called "cup board" and are made on special multi ply paper machines and have a barrier coating for waterproofing. The paper needs high stiffness and strong wet sizing. The cup board grades have 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 good stiffness and handling properties in the cup. The basis weights of the cup boards are 170-350 g/m2[9].
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.
Cups for cold drinks could not be treated in the same way, as condensation forms on the outside, then soaks into the board, making the cup unstable. To remedy this, cup manufacturers developed the technique of spraying both the inside and outside of the cup with wax. Both clay-coated and wax-coated cups disappeared with the invention of polyethylene (PE) coated cups; this process covers the surface of the board with a very thin layer of PE, waterproofing the board and welding the seams together.
Most paper cups are designed for a single use and then disposal or recycling. A life cycle inventory of a comparison of paper vs plastic cups shows environmental effects of both with no clear winner.[10]
A study of one paper coffee cup with sleeve (16 ounce) shows that the CO2 emissions is about .11 kilograms (.25 pounds) per cup with sleeve - including paper from trees, materials, production and shipping.[11] The loss of natural habitat potential from the paper coffee cup (16 ounce) with a sleeve is estimated to be .09 square meters (.93 square feet).[12]
Over 6.5 million trees were cut down to make 16 billion paper cups used by US consumers in 2006, using 4 billion US gallons (15,000,000 m3) of water and resulting in 253 million pounds of waste.[13]
Very little recycled paper is used to make paper cups because of contamination concerns and regulations. Because most paper cups are coated with plastic, both composting and recycling of paper cups is uncommon.[13]
Although paper cups are made from renewable resources (wood chips 95% by weight), paper products in a landfill may not decompose, or may release methane if decomposed anaerobically. 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).[14][15] A number of cities—including Portland, Oregon—have banned XPS foam cups in take-out and fast food restaurants.[16]
PE is a petroleum based coating on paper cups that can slow down the process of biodegrading. PLA is a biodegradable bio-plastic coating used on some paper cups. PLA is a renewable resource and makes paper cups more compostable, whereas PE is not renewable and is not compositable.
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: a press-on, resealable, lid (used for large "family size" containers, 250 ml to 1000 ml, where not all of the yogurt may be consumed at any one time and thus the ability to re-close the container is required) and heat-seal foil lids (used for small "single serving" containers, 150 ml to 200 ml).[17]