fastfood chain&rsquos new cups are made of cookie and wrapped in sugar paper kfc kfc this week announced it will serve coffee in edible cups in its u.k. stores.no, the news here isn&rsquot that the friedchicken chain sells coffee though coffee isn&rsquot sold at most of its u.s. locations, it&rsquos that kfc has partnered with food scientists to create edible cups made from biscuits, wrapped in sugar paper and lined with a layer of white chocolate, metro uk reported.kfc, owned by yum brands inc. yum, 0.31 isn&rsquot the first to introduce edible cups.dominique ansel bakery &mdash of &ldquocronut&rdquo fame &mdash introduced the &ldquocookie shot&rdquo last year, a chocolatechip cookie shaped like a shot glass and filled with milk. &ldquofor me as a pastry chef, it&rsquos always fun to play with the shape and way foods interact with each other,&rdquo said creator dominique ansel.dominique ansel bakeryedible packaging is a relatively new concept and could significantly reduce the amount of paper or plastic packaging used, said environmental paper network advisory board member darby hoover. &ldquoone of the most promising applications,&rdquo hoover said, &ldquomay be in the quickservice restaurant sector, as in this kfc example, where packages or containers that ordinarily are designed to be used once and then thrown away could instead be edible.&rdquobut edible packaging might not necessarily be a &ldquogreener&rdquo option.&ldquowe need to be careful to ensure we aren&rsquot just trading one kind of packaging for another,&rdquo hoover said.ansel said edible cups won&rsquot necessarily reduce paper consumption, as the edible cups may themselves come packaged.&ldquoyou would have to make sure the packaging is really treated like food and kept in temperaturecontrolled and sanitary conditions,&rdquo he said. &ldquoand then i would guess you should make sure you don&rsquot directly place that on an unclean surface but use a separate plate.&rdquoand then there&rsquos the issue of food waste if people don&rsquot actually eat the edible cups.&ldquowe also need to make sure that the edible packaging is tasty and appropriate to the type of food being served, so that we don&rsquot just trade off wasting packaging for wasting more food,&rdquo hoover said.recyclable, postconsumer packaging with an estimated market value of 11.4 billion is wasted annually. and packaging isn&rsquot cheap, either. bagel chain einstein noah restaurant group co. has said 8 of its spending on commodities goes to paper products, according to a 2014 investor presentation.here&rsquos the nrdc&rsquos ranking of fastfood restaurants by sustainability programsnrdchoover said consumers can still reduce consumption of paper products, by, for example, bringing a reusable mug to coffee shops.at starbucks corp. sbux, 0.11 , just 1.8 of the 46.9 million beverages sold at its stores in 2013 were served in personal tumblers. starbucks aims to serve 5 of its drinks in personal tumblers by 2015. the result of starbucks&rsquo reusablecup efforts will be released at the end of march, a spokesperson said.&ldquowe have always struggled to move the needle on our customers&rsquo use of personal tumblers above 2 of transactions,&rdquo according to a report by starbucks on the environmental footprint of cups.the cost breakeven point for ceramic cups is approximately 15 to 20 uses. a starbucks test assumes a paper cup costs the company 15 cents including lid and insulating sleeve. a store that replaces on average 10 paper cups sold per hour with reusable cups would save 6,426 annually.
