Several restaurants these days sell beverages in paper cups, and some of those restaurants even sell several sizes of said beverages in paper cups. From big restaurants like Wendy’s to smaller restaurants, paper beverage cups have become more common. However, paper cups have yet to replace all disposable drinking containers of all sizes for all companies that sell them.
There is currently a campaign to get McDonald’s to switch from plastic drinking straws to paper drinking straws in order to reduce pollution and reduce damage to the wildlife. I hate McDonald’s (for both their food and the horrid way they treat their employees), but if this campaign succeeds, it could put pressure on other restaurant chains to switch to paper cups as well.
Whether in the dirt or the water, paper degrades significantly faster than either plastic or styrofoam. However, modern disposable beverage containers have 3 parts. The cup, the straw, and the lid. These parts will only be used once to maybe a handful of times before being tossed away, buried, maybe recycled, or lit on fire, so it would seem to be more logical to use materials that would degrade a lot faster if the finished products got loose in the environment.
According to a very quick Google search, paper drink lids currently are being sold. If restaurants where to implement paper cup lids, even more plastic could be removed from our beaches, oceans, forests, and other parts of the environment.
There have been campaigns to ban plastic shopping bags, and eliminate plastic drawing straws, but paper cup lids so far seem to have been untouched.