NEW YORK – The Wall Street Journal reports that more food and beverage companies are weighing whether to switch to paper cups, citing both costs and reducing their environmental footprint.

In terms of sustainability, Michael Lenihan, director of sales and customer relations at International Paper, told the newspaper that food businesses are recognizing the switch to paper “as a brand opportunity on a much broader scope."

According to environmental advocates, once plastic foam is broken up in landfills, it’s often mistaken for food by animals, and many recycling plants in the U.S. don’t take them. As for paper cups, they “aren't as environmentally friendly as they seem,” writes the newspaper, because they are typically coated in plastic or have beverage residue and therefore only about 11% of recycling plants can currently recycle them, according to the American Forest and Paper Association. The lack of an "easily recyclable cup designed for hot beverages" is a reason why Dunkin' Brands hasn’t made the switch to paper cups, Karen Raskopf, the company’s chief communications officer, commented.

"At this point, we don't know if our end solution will be paper or another material," she told the newspaper.

The plastic foam debate has hit cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, which banned plastic foam in 2007 and 2009, respectively, instead of requiring food vendors to offer compostable or recyclable to-go containers, notes the newspaper. More recently the New York City Council passed a ban on plastic-foam foodservice containers in December 2013. Container companies have until Jan. 1, 2015, to prove to the city’s sanitation commissioner that “dirty foam” can be “recycled and sold in an economically viable way.”

Keith Christman, managing director for plastics markets at American Chemistry Council, told the newspaper that there are “a lot of misconceptions around polystyrene foam versus paper," adding that foam is "composed 95% out of air, so you use less material in the first place making it." That also results in less energy use and less bulk waste, he added.

McDonald's has been using double-walled paper cups at about 2,000 West Coast locations since 2012 and is expanding into the Midwest and parts of the East Coast, Ian Olson, director of sustainability, told the newspaper. Although the cups are more expensive, the QSR says it makes a difference environmentally because most of the company’s waste is paper-based and therefore it all ends up in the same recycling bin.