Disposable coffee cups are one of the most widely used forms of single-use packaging in the world, billions of them are used and thrown away every year. They are usually made from a cardboard sleeve coated inside with a water resistant polymer and a thin plastic lid made from High Impact Polystyrene (HIPS). Because these recyclable lids are thrown away with the non-recyclable coffee cup they often slip through traditional recycling systems and end up in landfill or contaminating the natural environment.
Lidia is a design concept for a system that would allow the coffee cup lids to be separated, granulated, washed and dried in a single device in a retail setting, allowing waste collectors to simply pick up bags of pre-granulated plastic waste.
