Food Packaging

Our Goal

The CoRR goal for this program is to recycle paper cups and fast food packaging, along with corrugated cardboard, into valuable, high-quality materials.

Every year, 58 billion paper cups[1] are used in the U.S. at restaurants, events and homes. If all paper cups in the U.S. were recycled, 645,000 tons of waste would be diverted from landfills each year, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2.5 million mtCO2e, equivalent to removing 450,000 passenger cars from the road. If successful, the pilot could influence the design of all paper food packaging, potentially increasing the benefits above by ten-fold.[2]

Our Approach

Phase I: Starbucks Paper Cup Pilot

An eight week pilot was conducted at seven Starbucks stores in Manhattan to collect and recycle its paper hot beverage cups, which were pre-screened for recyclability, with old corrugated cardboard (OCC). Phase I tests met established targets to merit additional testing.

Phase II: Piloting Pratt Institute's Bins at Local Universities

Pratt Institute developed prototype bins and educational strategies which are being pilot at the New School. The consumer education strategies being tested include: educational posters, table top informational toys, and completely redesigned trash, plastic bottle/aluminum can/glass bottle, mixed paper, and paper cup bins with eye-level signage.

Next Steps

CoRR’s 2011 goal is to demonstrate the success of the concept at scale. The material will be held for two weeks and surged through a local recycling mill in order to prove the ease of recycling this material, even when a surge in foodservice packaging materials occurs in the OCC stream. The results of recycling this volume of material with OCC as one batch will provide the ‘in the field’ data needed to garner support from other mills and expand to other cities and markets.