CA to ban disposable cups at restaurants for eat in

[Alpha8472]

Didn't Circle K have foam cups for the longest time? Do they still use those?

Also Wingstop for some reason uses foam food containers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I thought that foam was banned in most Bay Area cities.

Can you argue that superthick plastic cups can be reusable? There were plastic cups at 7-Eleven that you used to bring back for refills? Those were the decorative ones for movie promotions and they were not much different than the single use plastic ones.

Where do you draw the line?

[Brian Lutz]

Circle K still uses foam cups here, as do a lot of other places (Chick-fil-A, Cook Out, Bojangles and most of the C-stores all come to mind.) Quik Trip offers the Big Q size drinks in either plastic or foam cup, charging slightly more for foam. Most other places have switched to plastic, but oddly enough Costco is still using paper cups for cold drinks. Most hot drinks are still in paper cups for obvious reasons.

[storewanderer]

Didn't Circle K have foam cups for the longest time? Do they still use those?

Also Wingstop for some reason uses foam food containers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I thought that foam was banned in most Bay Area cities.

Can you argue that superthick plastic cups can be reusable? There were plastic cups at 7-Eleven that you used to bring back for refills? Those were the decorative ones for movie promotions and they were not much different than the single use plastic ones.

Where do you draw the line?

Circle K still has foam all over CA too. Only a few cities with a foam ban, they get a plastic cup for all sizes. However Circle K has an XXL Refill Cup which is a plastic cup (same one other c-stores mostly use for all sizes) and it is around 1.79 and this one they have a reusable blue lid for this cup.

The standard gas station cups at 7-Eleven, AM PM, Extra Mile, Circle K, etc. in the plastic are absolutely reusable. If you do not put sugar drinks in them, they are very easy to clean and reusable many, many times. Sugar drinks you just need to clean them more but if stuff gets dried inside you have to really scrub it to clean it. The grooves in the bottom of the cups sometimes are where color substance accumulates but it isn't that hard to get that clean with any temperature water a paper towel and straw even. Easier with hot water/soap but not impossible without.

The biggest things that cause those plastic cups to go is sometimes the print on the cups starts to fade/get scratched/dirty looking from going in and out of cup holders. This is a problem with the Circle K XXL Reusable Cup- the blue print which goes real low down on the cup got all scratched up real fast going in/out of cup holders. Other large cups like QT, Maverik, Extra Mile, AM PM I have not had this issue- they do not have much print down low enough to get damaged by cup holders. Eventually the cups start to look a bit muggy from being refilled but that takes days/weeks/month to really happen.

QT, corporate operated Extra Mile, and Maverik sell empty cups/cups of ice- any size- so it is easy to obtain these cups for refill purposes. QT varies its price by region but Maverik is .50, the corporate CA Extra Miles may still be .35, and QT price varies by region/size but is under .50. Speedway used to sell cups of ice for .39 any size but not sure if 7-Eleven has put the brakes on that as they do not have a special price for am empty cup/ice cup.

The typical single use lid is the main barrier to constant reuse of the plastic cups most convenience stores give. The lid loses its seal as it comes on and off. This is why the cup Circle K explicitly markets for refills is with a reusable lid. Quik Trip uses only reusable lids for all drink sizes (the 1.09 kid cup all the way to the 52oz) for the plastic cups. Those lids you just need to clean/wash them around where the seal is and the straw and they can be used for longer than the cup.

I think those Wing Stop containers are foam but they feel different than most foam. Maybe it is a different foam type. It seems thinner yet does not fall apart or burn hole from extremely hot product going into it. It also doesn't seem to suffocate the crispiness of the product the way a foam container usually does with fried food however Wing Stop here serves fries to go in an open boat (puts it in top of the bag on top of the foam containers) so I think the fries still suffocated in the foam.