German Company Finds Bamboo Reusable Cups To Be Non-Environmentally Friendly & Unsafe

2019-11-16 , 6:00 am

Going green is the next big thing.

KFC is doing it. Starbucks is doing it. Hell, even everyday people like you and me are doing it.

So much so that instead of one-time-use plastic cups, we’re going for reusable cups and cutlery.

But what if something that’s supposed to be good for our environment and us, isn’t actually that good?

That’s what one established German consumer organisation, Stiftung Warentest, found.

Between March and April 2019, the company bought 12 reusable bamboo cups.

The objective? To run a test on them and see if they’re legitimate.

And it was found that they weren’t.

Their tests found that all 12 cups were not made of 100% pure bamboo fibre.

Instead, they were made from powdered bamboo and required an adhesive chemical to shape it into a cup.

In other words, it acts as a glue.

The adhesive material was found to be a plastic material called melamine resin.

I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking right now.

Wait a minute…plastic?!

Yes.

The cups are not biodegradable and they cannot be easily recycled as well because it’s hard to separate the bamboo from the plastic.

Now, if you’re thinking it couldn’t get worse…it could.

Some of the cups claimed to be environmentally-friendly, even going as far as to claim:

“Bamboo is a natural material that does not create non-biodegradable waste.”

Which is technically true, if you think about it. Except they didn’t mention that their cup isn’t made of pure bamboo and nothing else.

Melamine resin is made from two chemicals:

If you find the word melamine familiar, it’s because of the milk scandal in China back in 2008.

Melamine isn’t safe for consumption and is suspected of causing damage to bladder and kidneys when exposed to high temperatures.

As for Formaldehyde, it causes irritation to the skin, eyes and respiratory system. In fact, it causes cancer as well.

So if you’re using a “bamboo reusable cup” for your hot coffee, it might be a good time to change.

One of the 12 bamboo reusable cups belong to IKEA and the test detected a high amount of melamine.

They’ve taken their bamboo cup Mugg down for retesting after the test results came out.

One thing for sure, if you own a bamboo reusable cup, don’t use it for hot drinks, or worse, put it into the microwave.