***• After six weeks Intern with Sustainable House, TJ, finds no remnants of take away coffee cups made by Compostable Alt***

By TJ Palli,

intern from the US working with Sustainable House

**• Intern Maclaine putting shreds of the coffee cups into the left basket of the Coolseat on March 27th**

On March 27th, interns Lucy and Maclaine took coffee cups from Compostable Alternatives and put them into a Coolseat on the corner of Myrtle and Shepherd Street to test and track their breakdown progress. Read more about the beginning of this trial here.

Since Lucy and Maclaine have returned to the U.S., I checked in on the coffee cups and lids on May 14th to record their breakdown progress.

When the other interns put the cups into the coolseat, they tore up four of them in the left basket and left two intact in the right basket.

On 14 May, when I augered both baskets and completely turned up the insides to find any remnants of the cups. In the right basket I did not encounter anything resembling a full cup, but found an old torn up piece of paper about the size of a credit card. In the left basket the only bit of paper I could find was even smaller, about half the size of the paper scrap from the other basket.

**• A cardboard or paper remnant of what may have been a coffee cup from the right basket of the Coolseat, along with a worm!**

The results of the trial showed that the Compostable Alternatives coffee cups and lids were well on the way to full decomposition. In fact, it was hard to even determine if the scraps I found originally belonged to the cups Lucy and Maclaine put in the coolseat. This much progress has occurred in only 7 weeks rather than the 24 weeks that these products are advertised to decompose in. This may be because the coolseats compost food waste in 3 to 4 weeks and we turn over the compost each week because physical disturbance increases airflow and aids the decomposition process.

**• The left basket of the Coolseat, a well-decomposed batch of compost absent of any coffee cup scraps**

Overall the coffee cup trial has been a great success! The results of this trial show that Compostable Alternatives (@compostablealt on Instagram) have made an effective, sustainable product that you can find here.

Compostable Alt is an Australian-owned social enterprise whose mission is to make composting more accessible to businesses and consumers by creating products that don’t require the commercial composting process, but instead can decompose in home composters. This matches Coolseats’ mission, and creating connections between these two small businesses brings us a step closer to a green and sustainable future.

There is no financial connection between Sustainable House or Coolseats and Compostable Alt, just shared values.

You can find both the single and double-garden bed Coolseats and buy them on this website.

By

TJ Palli