Nothing gives you a better feeling than drinking hot coffee from Starbucks while walking in the street in the winter. By taking away culture, plastic cup is the most convenient way to achieve your dream. But is it safe enough to use a plastics cup for your hot coffee? Can you put your hot coffee in plastic cups? If this is what you are wondering, this post was born to be found by you.
From my personal point of view, there will be divided into two situations. The first situation is when the plastic cup that you mean is a single-use plastic cup. The second situation is plastic tumblers made by Starbucks. In both cases I mentioned before, you can use plastic cups.
However, there is something you need to know before using them. In the first situation, you can use a plastic cup theoretically because single-plastic cups melt at around 130 degrees celsius. However, the final result will not be the same as the theory in real life. The plastic cup will change its form when the heat nearly reaches 130 degrees celsius. It will cause health problems such as cancer. In addition, plastic is good at heat-conducting, so it will quickly hurt your hands when you try to hold the cup.
Therefore, I suggest you use polypropylene cups, famous for their higher melting degrees than regular plastic cups. However, from my experience, most coffee stores nowadays do not use plastic cups for hot beverages anymore; they use paper cups instead. Using paper cups has two most significant advantages: preventing hurting their customers’ hands and marketing purpose.
In the second situation, the cup you mentioned was a plastic cup made by Starbucks, called a tumbler. At this point, you can confidently use it without any barrier because most of these Starbucks merch has double walls, which are designed for hot drinks at Starbucks, even the plastic types.
However, if you are looking for a cup that can make your coffee stay warm for hours, I recommend you should give the metal tumblers a chance. Since last year, I have owned an all-black metal Starbucks cup, and I can proudly say that it is one of my best purchases. It can make my coffee warm for hours and stay cold for around 6 hours. There are several designs so you can easily choose one for yourself. For example, they have cups for Christmas, Lunar New Year, Easter, etc. However, their biggest con is the price. For instance, my cup in the basic line costs over $20, and the seasonal trending cups cost over average $30 for each. Are Starbucks tumblers worth it? Yes, purchasing a Starbucks reusable cup has never been more worth it than today. Because bringing a reusable cup from home will usually get a 10% discount on your drink at many stores.
You can put your hot coffee in your plastic Starbucks cup. Still, if it is a single-use plastic cup, I believe you should avoid doing it too often, but if it is plastic cup merch made by Starbucks, you should do it more often to protect our environment and get a discount every time.
Which Cups Are Safe For Hot Drinks?
Do you love hot drinks? I love hot beverages with all of my heart. However, there is a problem that always matters to me whenever I buy a hot drink. And it is the cup I use. Plastic cups are the best idea for taking away but is it safe enough for hot beverages? Can you put your hot drink in a plastics cup? And which cups are ideal for hot beverages? Let’s find out together!
There are several types of plastic cups, so in today’s topic, I will compare the three most common types of cups around the world: single-use plastic cups, polypropylene cups, and paper cups.
First, we will begin with the most common cup at coffee stores worldwide: single-use plastic cup. Its title says it all. This cup is made of plastics and is suggested to use once. However, it is vital because of how convenient and cheap it is. You can easily catch this type of cup in every coffee shop, with the shop’s logo on it. In theory, a single-use plastic cup is safe for hot drinks because it melts at 130 degrees Celcius, while hot beverages are usually served at around 70 degrees Celcius. However, in real life, I bet you at least once seen the plastic cup change its form because of the hot drink they were holding.
Next, we will take a closer look at the polypropylene cup’s features. A polypropylene cup is considered ideal for hot beverages because polypropylene melts at around 170 degrees Celcius, which is higher than single-use plastic cups. Its second con is that while the melting point is higher, its price is reasonable. It brings more benefits to the stores. They can use polypropylene cups for both hot and cold drinks, and it is pretty convenient when they do not have to buy two types of cups. Printing their logos on mugs is also easier. And their bartenders can save their time because they do not have to pick the correct kind of cup for signature drinks.
Finally, paper cup. Since people started to care about the environment, plastic straws and plastic cups have been transferred into paper straws and paper cups because they can be reused or decomposed more quickly than plastic material. Paper cups have a higher melting point and are also BPA free. And because of the protecting the Earth trend, some stores also use paper cups for marketing purposes. People tend to love environmentally friendly brands, so some brands become more eco-friendly to attract more customers.
As I mentioned, besides three types of cups, you can also consider using tumblers. I highly recommend using a metal tumbler. You can easily choose a tumbler from eBay, Amazon, or Starbucks. You can put hot drinks in it without worrying about melting points, and it will keep my drinks warm for hours.
In conclusion, you can put hot drinks in all the cups listed above, but you should understand how they work to avoid harming your health.