Cardboard take away coffee cups are plasticised, because, if not, the cardboard cup would soak and fall apart when filled with liquid.
When the plasticised-cardboard of the take-away coffee cup goes through the temperature change of being filled with the hot liquid, thousands of micro and millions of nano sized plastic molecules fracture and fragment away from the plasticised-cardboard, into your cup of coffee. [Source: (link).]
Mostly the plastic we ingest passes through us, however, we accumulate plastic nano-particles and studies show them throughout our bodies.
The plastic nano molecules we accumulate accumulate primarily in our brains, we don’t know why, however plastic accumulates in our bodies mostly in our brain, Plastic accumulates in the brain at ~10 times higher levels than in the liver or kidneys (91% vs. 4% and 4% of total plastic mass in these organs). [Source: (link).]
Nothing-Decomposes-Plastic. Plastic may fracture or fragment when exposed to temperature change or sunlight or abrasion, polymer chains being the smallest molecular structure, but it will not go away and it is destroying the ecology at every scale.
Shop instead at the Caldera Environment Centre for ceramic take-away keep cups.
$20, double walled, ceramic. 43a Wollumbin Street Murwillumbah, next to Wholefoods.
See Also: Plastic Reinforced Paper Tea Bags: We are ingesting millions of nano particles of plastic per cup of tea. [Source: (link)].
Note: Studies linked Above:
• MNP Release: Ranjan et al. (2022, Journal of Hazardous Materials) ‘Microplastics and other harmful substances released from disposable paper cups into hot water.’ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304389420321087?via%3Dihub
• Brain Accumulation: Nihart et al. (2025, Nature Medicine). Brain MNPs at 4917 µg/g vs. liver (433 µg/g) and kidney (404 µg/g). Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-03453-1
