About 400 million cups of coffee are used per day in America, making it the largest consumer of coffee. The rise of many coffee chains such as Starbucks and other independent cafes is imperial to the widespread consumption of coffee in the U.S.

You are probably one of those consumers who start their day with a cup of coffee poured in disposable cups with lids, but did you know that it takes years of research and development to design a single coffee lid?

Here are 5 more fun facts about coffee lids you didn’t know:

The First Ever Coffee Cup Lid was Designed in the 1950s.

It might sound odd, but the very first disposable cup + lid combo was designed back in 1953 by Delbert E. Phinney, who patented the design, but it failed to gain any significant traction back in the day because people didn’t prefer to take hot coffee while on road until decades later.

Splash Proof Lids Take Preference.

When you buy a cup of steaming hot coffee, you’d want yourself protected from any potential splashes of the scalding hot liquid. This resulted in designing splash-proof stoppers for coffee cup lids.

Standardization of Coffee Cup Lids

When coffee became highly popular around the world, there arose a need to design a standard design cup, so that one lid fits all coffee cups around the world. That is why you’ll notice that coffee lids of almost every coffee chain looks almost the same when it comes to size and dimensions.

Innovative Lid Designs

There have been many odd designs for coffee cups over the years, such as the famous Solo Traveler lid, which had a patented design to accommodate the nose when sipping coffee through the lid. Another design is the Kiss lid by a South Korean designer, with lid design resembling a face.

The Pin Hole in Coffee Lids is Important

You might have seen a pin hole in your cup lid, and it is present to prevent any kind of suction from building up when you suck the coffee via straw. The hole helps in maintaining air pressure inside the cup.

Plastic cups and paper cups are two of the most commonly used disposables in cafes, coffee shops and fast food restaurants. The first and foremost advantage of these cups is their disposable nature, meaning they don’t need to be cleaned or retained by the provider. It gives the freedom to the customer to take it away with them and throw it away after they have used it. Most outlets provide paper and plastic cups with lids to prevent the drink from spilling.

Plastic cups have been around longer than paper cups, and while many would say paper cups are more ‘green’ than plastic cups, the latter have their own set of advantages and disadvantages, some of which are as follows:

Advantages of Plastic Cups

The one area where plastic cups beat paper cups is their friendly and energy saving production process. Plastic, being made of chemicals, doesn’t need much energy and processing like paper cups do. This means plastic cups require significantly less resources and energy to make as compared to paper cups, which require significant energy because of processing wooden pulps and recycled paper which itself is an extra step in production of anything related to paper.

Plastic cups are lighter than paper cups, meaning transporting them on bulk needs less gas and effort as compared to paper cups. Paper is heavier than thin plastic, hence the weight difference. One single cup may not make a difference, but if you consider them in thousands in bulk, the weight difference is very noticeable.

Finally, plastic cups are cheaper than paper cups, because of their production and transportation costs, which is higher for paper cups.

Disadvantages of Plastic Cups

Now onto the disadvantages of plastic cups. The biggest argument against them is that they don’t decompose easily, which is true. If thrown into a landfill, these plastic cups will take thousands of years, even more, to fully decompose and integrate into the earth, unlike paper which doesn’t take that much time.

However, most plastic cups being used now-days are recyclable, meaning most of them end up at a plastic recycling facility instead of throwing them away in a pit. This means cutting down on waste while conserving resources.