Soft rims. Leaking seams.
A cup that goes soft at the rim or weeps at the seam becomes a remake, a refund and a one-star review — about your coffee, not about the cup.
BPI Affiliate Member · Plant-based · 12–22 oz
Give your café, restaurant or campus a plant-based cup built for commercial composting — without the soft rims and seam leaks your customers hate. And a straight answer about what we have and haven’t had tested.
Your cup is a brand decision
A cup that goes soft at the rim or weeps at the seam becomes a remake, a refund and a one-star review — about your coffee, not about the cup.
A cup sold as eco but coated with fluorinated chemicals exposes you to greenwashing complaints and failed inspections — after you already paid the premium.
Single-use plastic rules keep tightening city by city. Switching on a compliance deadline always costs more than switching on your own schedule.
ACPP lowers the risk the honest way: plant-based, built for commercial composting, durable hot and cold — and we tell you exactly which sentences you can safely print on your own packaging.
Why businesses switch
Moving off plastic ahead of a deadline is cheaper than moving on one. We give you the material breakdown you need for labelling laws — and we tell you plainly where our evidence stops.
We give you the material breakdown and the exact wording you can defend, so your sustainability claim holds up under scrutiny — and we tell you which sentences to avoid. No greenwashing risk, no angry reviews about packaging that falls apart.
A cup that stays firm hot or cold means fewer remakes and fewer complaints — a small upgrade customers actually notice at the counter.
How it’s built
Pressed plant fiber with a plant-based barrier. That is a materials fact you can check against what we buy — not a certificate we borrowed.
BPI Affiliate MemberWe will tell you the fiber, the barrier and the coating by name before you order. If a supplier won’t do that, you already have your answer.
Full disclosureDouble-seamed and firm from the first sip to the last, hot or cold. No soggy rim, no seam seepage — run a case through a full shift before you commit.
Hot + coldMade to break down in a commercial composting facility, where one exists. Not every U.S. city has one, and you should hear that from us and not from a customer.
Where facilities existSpecification
Every ACPP cup shares a 90 mm rim, so a single lid covers your entire line. One SKU to reorder, one shelf to stock, nothing to mismatch during a rush.
| Reference | Top diameter | Base diameter | Height |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12 oz | 90 mm | 58 mm | 110 mm |
| 16 oz | 90 mm | 61 mm | 135 mm |
| 20 oz | 90 mm | 60 mm | 164 mm |
| 22 oz | 90 mm | 60 mm | 170 mm |
Composting performance applies where industrial composting facilities are available. Ask us for the material breakdown for your market before you print any claim on your packaging.
“We don’t greenwash. We name every material, we say plainly what we have and haven’t had tested, and we hand you the wording you can defend — to your customers and to your inspector alike.”
Custom print
A printed cup is the only piece of packaging your customer holds for twenty minutes. Put your mark on one that survives the walk home.
The rest of the range
Individually wrapped, firm in hot and cold drinks, and shipped with the material breakdown so nobody has to take your word for it.
Plant-based
Kraft tubes that hold straws upright at the counter and carry your print — self-service without the plastic dispenser.
Kraft · printable
Grease-resistant sheets for burgers, sandwiches and bakery, printed edge to edge with your mark.
Grease-resistant
Back to soil in a commercial composting facility — not to a landfill for thirty years
ACPP supplies plant-based hot and cold cups wholesale across the U.S., in 12, 16, 20 and 22 oz. Every size shares a 90 mm rim, so one lid covers the whole line. Custom print is available in one or two colours. Minimum order is 20,000 units; smaller accounts are usually served through distributors.
The single-lid design is the detail most buyers underestimate. Four cup sizes normally mean four lid SKUs to reorder, stock and mismatch during a rush. One rim diameter removes that entirely.
A conventional paper cup is lined with polyethylene — a plastic film that keeps liquid in and prevents the cup from breaking down as one material. ACPP cups use a plant-based barrier instead, so the cup does not leave a plastic film behind after the fiber breaks down in a commercial composting facility.
This is the single most useful thing to check when comparing suppliers, because the outside of both cups looks identical.
A plant-fiber wall with a polyethylene lining is still a lined cup. The lining decides what happens after the last sip, and it is the part most product pages leave unmentioned. Ask any supplier to name the barrier material in writing before ordering.
Poorly made ones do. The two failure points are a rim that softens as it absorbs liquid and a seam that weeps under a hot drink. ACPP cups are double-seamed and rolled at the rim rather than taped, and buyers are encouraged to run a full case through a service shift before committing to a volume order.
Performance matters commercially, not just technically. A cup that fails at the counter becomes a remake, a refund and a review about your coffee — not about the cup.
Testing before ordering is the practical safeguard. ACPP sends samples on qualified wholesale enquiries so buyers can check rim firmness and seam integrity with their own drinks, at their own temperatures.
No. ACPP is a BPI Affiliate Member, which is a membership supporting the Biodegradable Products Institute's work on compostable packaging. It is not a product-level compostability certification, and ACPP does not hold one at this time. The site says so on every page rather than letting the badge imply otherwise.
This distinction is worth understanding when comparing suppliers, because affiliate badges and certification marks look similar on a product page.
Under FTC Green Guides the business printing the claim carries the liability, so a buyer who prints “certified compostable” on the strength of a supplier's membership badge is the one exposed.
ACPP's minimum order is 20,000 units. Cafés below that volume have two practical routes: order several months at once, since fiber stock keeps well in a dry stockroom, or buy through a distributor who breaks cases down for smaller accounts. ACPP will point buyers to the closest distributor by city.
The minimum exists because fiber packaging is produced in runs, and short runs cost more per unit than they save.
For a café using roughly 5,000 cups a month, a single quarterly order clears the minimum comfortably and usually lands at a better unit price than buying monthly from a retail supplier.
Get pricing
You’ll get unit pricing for your sizes, lead time to your city and the full material breakdown — enough to compare us properly against what you buy today.