Coffee cups made for green bins

New product is biodegradable

By CLARE MELLOR Business Reporter

"Can you roll up the rim?"

Suzanne Spencer gets that question from a lot from consumers when she tells them about a new biodegradable coffee cup she is marketing.

"That’s the most popular question about them . . . I’m not kidding," says the former Halifax public relations consultant, who has a home business, Centsable Gift and Services Inc., in Sydney.

And yes, the rim could roll up for promotional contests if Tim Hortons wanted to ditch its paper cup for this certified biodegradable one, which decomposes within 50 days.

Standard paper coffee cups have a plastic or polyethylene coating to retain heat, which hinders their decomposition. But cups being sold by Green Shift in Toronto use a certified biodegradable resin coating made of vegetables, said Jennifer Wright, Green Shift’s president.

More...