Better disposable coffee cups
They can be made with the waste from sugar cane
SUGAR CANE contains around 10% sugar. But that means it contains around 90% non-sugar—the material known as bagasse (pictured) which remains once the cane has been pulverised and the sugar-bearing juice squeezed out of it. World production of cane sugar was 185m tonnes in 2017. That results in a lot of bagasse.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Would you like sugar cane in that?”
From the November 14th 2020 edition
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