Supplies

Costa Coffee to recycle 500m cups as part of a cup recycling revolution?

The UK’s biggest coffee chain, Costa Coffee, plans to recycle 500m cups a year in an effort to cut down the amount sent to landfill sites.

Around 2.5bn disposable coffee cups are thrown away each year in the UK and£99.75 per cent are not recycled.

Costa currently have recycling collection points for their cups in their 2, 380 UK branches, but most takeaway coffees are consumed elsewhere.

The coffee giant says that the issue is collecting the cups once they have been disposed of correctly.

Costa managing director, Dominic Paul, told Sky News: “By creating a market for cups as a valuable recyclable material, we are confident that we can transform the UK’s ineffective and inconsistent ‘binfrastructure’ to ensure hundreds of millions of cups get recycled every year.

“One hundred million cups will be recycled this year alone following today’s announcement, and if the nation’s other coffee chains sign up, there is no reason why all takeaway cups could not be recycled by as early as 2020.

Costa aim to persuade waste collection collectors to put in place infrastructure to hand the cups, such as installing collection points in office and taking them to recycling points.

As previously there had been misconceptions that had arose about whether a coffee cup could be recycled because of the plastic layer, which had been considered difficult to separate.

As a fsorm of encouragement, Costa has pledged to pay waste collection firms a supplement of 70 a tonne to collect its cups. This is on top of the 50 it already receive.

An additional 5 per tonne will be paid to a firm that will check the scheme is running smoothly.

The five waste collection firms have been involved are in developing the new scheme are:

1. Veolia,
2. Biffa
3. Suez
4. Grundon
5. First Mile.

Grundon’s sales and marketing director, Bradley Smith, said Costa was helping to create the right conditions for paper cups to become a valuable recycled material.

“This provides increased stability and confidence in the market, which will help waste management companies like Grundon to extend paper cup recycling services to more customers, ” he added.

Environmental campaigners have also welcomed Costa’s move to a greener environment.