An initiative aimed at tackling the issue of disposable coffee cup recycling is to be launched across London in April by UK environmental charity Hubbub.
In partnership with recycling company Simply Cups, the scheme involves the likes of Network Rail, The City of London, national coffee retailers and some of the Square Mile’s biggest employers.
Every day up to seven million coffee cups are thrown away across the UK, with fewer than one per cent of these cups thought to be recycled.
The tricky issue to date has been the plastics film on the inside of the paper cups, which means that the cups can rarely be recycled with other mixed recycling.
The recycling methods used for the Square Mile Challenge will process the cups to create either a plastics or recovered fibre material, which is made into new products.
Wendy Mead, chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Environment Committee, said: “We are very excited that the City of London will be the first area in the UK to undertake such a significant commitment to tackling the problem of coffee cup waste.
In April we are installing facilities to collect disposable coffee cups on the street and in stations, coffee shops and businesses across the Square Mile and our ambition is to recycle half a million cups in that first month.”
Gavin Ellis, co-Founder of Hubbub, said: “This is a big step up from the pilot scheme we have been running in Manchester, which has seen 20,000 cups recycled from one street over three months.
With the collaboration of so many key organisations, we believe this will be a huge step forward in tackling a challenging environmental issue and we aim to build on from April to recycle five million cups from the Square Mile by the end of 2017.
We hope that by making a success of a scheme of this scale, we will encourage other parts of the UK to follow suit and would hope to reach a point where recycling levels for coffee cups are on a par with those for drinks cans and bottles.”
This initiative has been made possible with the support of Bunzl Catering Suppliers, Costa, Marks and Spencer, McDonald’s, Nestlé, Pret A Manger, Starbucks and a group of the leading coffee cup manufacturers.
It follows the launch of the Paper Cup Manifesto in June 2016, which garnered more than 40 signatories from companies involved in the coffee industry, committing to improve recovery and increase recycling of paper cups.
The first 30 businesses with more than 500 employees to sign up to the Square Mile Challenge will receive a year’s free membership to collection services provided by Simply Cups, and all other businesses involved can take advantage of discounted rates for collections.
The coffee cups collected can be remade into a range of items, from pencils to park benches, which will be donated to local community projects and schools and used to reward those contributing the most to the recycling effort during the challenge.
Keen to highlight both the long term and short term solutions that the industry is taking on this issue, the British Coffee Association called the initiative an excellent example of collaborating to create progress.
Chris Stemman, executive director of the British Coffee Association, told Plastics in Packaging: “The Square Mile Challenge by Hubbub represents a great example of the UK coffee industry coming together and collaborating to create solutions for paper cup and environmental sustainability issues.
In addition to this work the UK coffee industry is also looking at longer-term initiatives to holistically tackle these issues, which include developing new cup materials, as well as enhancing sustainable collection and processing practices that can be adopted in the future.”
Peter Goodwin, director of Simply Cups, added: “It’s fantastic that big businesses are supporting the Square Mile Challenge.
Large numbers of coffee cups are binned in offices as people arrive at work or pop out for coffees throughout the day.
We’d like to see responsible disposal of these become as commonplace as paper recycling schemes in offices and we hope that seeing the products that can be produced from their recycled cups will help motivate city workers to support the recycling effort.”
Says Shirine Khoury-Haq, chief operating officer at Lloyd’s: “Real change comes from what we do as individuals and the Square Mile Challenge is all about this.
Most of us grab a cup of coffee or tea at least once a day, and in the same way that disposing of a plastics bottle or can responsibly is becoming the norm, we can achieve the same thing with coffee cups.
Given our origins in the Lloyd’s coffee shop, it is appropriate that our employees lead the way on this initiative.”
Steven Pacitti
