Question from gayle
I’m almost frightened to ask this, but do you, or anyone, know how safe or unsafe the “hot cups” are from Starbucks?? I love that they serve organic milk, but what happens to it once they pour it in those bleached paper cups?!
Debra’s Answer
I went down to Starbuck’s and got a paper hot cup. Looks pretty white to me. But then I noticed that it says right on the cup, “Made with 10% post-consumer recycled fiber.” So I called the corporate headquarters and was told that their coffee filters, paper cups, and paper food contianers are whitened with a “nontoxic bleach.” I was glad to hear that about the coffee filters!
Now I know there are two processes for bleaching paper. One uses chlorine, which produces very toxic dioxin, which can leach into foods and beverages from paper packaging. The other uses oxygen bleach, and it doesn’t form dioxin.
Given the information given to me by Starbuck’s I would say they are aware of the dioxin problem with chlorine-bleached white paper cups, and are using a safely bleached cup.
