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Notre impact environnemental

Environmental analysis
of different cups and alternatives

Coffee mug

Which solution
has the lowest environmental impact? 

With over 1.6 billion cups of coffee consumed every day worldwide, the choice of the container in which we drink can have a major impact on our planet, especially if we make the wrong choice!
 

 

The aim of this study is to compare each solution, taking into account their entire life cycle, from production to end of life. We have selected 3 main criteria for the most relevant comparison possible.

energy consumption
Carbon impact
water consumption

Non-renewable

energy (in MJ)

Carbon impact :

greenhouse gas

emissions

(in kg CO2 eq)

Water consumption

 (in L)

Comparison of energy consumption (in MJ)

The framework determined for this study is as follows: 

150 employees who consume 3 drinks a day over the course of a year, i.e. a total of 99,450 drinks

In this study we compared :

Les gobelets jetables en plastique

(même si ces derniers sont interdits

depuis le 1er Janvier 2020 avec la loi Egalim)

Mugs with 2 cleaning methods: dishwasher and sponge

Reusable hard plastic cups

Biodegradable paper cups made from wood cellulose and PLA

Compostable PLA cups

auum by Bodum glasses cleaned by the auum-S machine

Results in figures

Comparison of greenhouse
emissions (in kg CO2 eq.)

Comparison of greenhouse gas emissions auum-s

For the 99,450 drinks consumed in a year, the carbon impact of each solution has been calculated for each phase of the product's life. The use phase is not included as it does not emit greenhouse gases.

 


The difference in impact between reusable and single-use solutions is obvious. It can be explained by the number of times it is reused: the more a single container is used, the lower the impact of its production and end-of-life. In fact, for the same use case, the number of disposable cups required drops from 99,450 to just 150 (1 per employee) in the case of a reusable solution. 

On the other hand, reuse requires regular cleaning, which can have repercussions on water and energy consumption (see following graphs).

Comparison of water consumption (in litres)

auum-S water consumption comparison

In the case of disposable solutions, water consumption comes solely from the production of the cup. Over the course of a year, this represents astronomical quantities of water that can easily be saved with reusable solutions. However, this time consumption is closely linked to the cleaning solution chosen: washing a mug under the tap uses 9 times more water than cleaning it in the dishwasher.
 

 

This is where the big difference between auum and the other alternatives lies.

The auum cleaning solution has been specifically designed to wash just one type of glass, so it can optimise the wash cycle to the maximum and keep water consumption to a strict minimum. With an auum-S, you save 20,000 litres compared to cleaning in a dishwasher.
 

 

Other parameters could not be taken into account in this study, but are just as real. It's important to note that cleaning a mug or reusable cup requires large quantities of soap (around 80 kg over the year), whereas the auum solution requires no chemicals at all. 

Compostable cups: 

If it was still possible to believe in the ecological character of compostable cups, we have to realise that as well as being ranked last on every criterion, their end-of-life is far from being as ecological as it seems.

In reality, the cup is not recovered by the composting system and ends up buried or incinerated like plastic or cardboard cups. 

 

Furthermore, even if they were composted at the end of their life, their impact would still be greater than that of other existing solutions. 

auum-S energy consumption comparison

As in the study on water consumption, the impact of disposable solutions comes solely from their production and end-of-life. The thermoforming process used to make the cups consumes a lot of energy. 

For reusable solutions, it is the use and cleaning phase that requires the most energy. 

 


Hand washing the mug requires the energy of the employee who takes the trouble to clean it, at the cost of an explosion in water consumption. 

Atmospheric pollution
Plastic pollution
Beach pollution

Comparison of solutions and their impact

(in Litre)

(in kg eq. CO2)

(in MJ)

Water consumption

Carbon impact

Energy impact

Paper cup

Disposable paper cup

30 x more

100 x more

Mug

Mug

Mug solution compared with 2 types of cleaning

Dishwasher

Dish washer

8 x more

4 x more

25 x more

Tap

Hand wash

40 x more

15 x more

150 x more

study carried out vs. auum by bodum glass combined with the auum-S cleaning machine consuming only 4wh/cycle and 2cl of water. Read the full study here

When we take all the criteria in this study into account, it undeniably highlights the high environmental performance of reuse as a whole, and more specifically of the auum-S solution and its auum by Bodum glasses. 

But this result is not insignificant. Auum developed its solution with this vision in mind, and the only way to reduce consumption as much as possible is to standardise cleaning by adapting the container to the cleaning process. Cleaning then becomes highly effective, simple, fast and fun. 
 

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