Glasgow Cup Movement steps up with new initiatives

Glasgow’s Cup Movement has announced two new initiatives to boost coffee cup recycling throughout the city.

Launched by environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful, the Cup Movement’s new #TakeItBack initiative aims to direct residents to coffee chain stores that will collect cups for recycling, whilst a new partnership with DS Smith will see the packaging company’s Drop Box recycling service rolled out across Glasgow.

As part of a collaboration with Glasgow City Council and some of the UK’s biggest coffee retailers, the #TakeItBack initiative will see signage added to the city’s blue street bins to encourage residents to take their cups to the collection points available in Costa, McDonald’s, Pret and Starbucks stores.

The initiative aims to raise awareness of the coffee cup recycling facilities available, after a recent survey carried out by Keep Scotland Beautiful found that 70 per cent of Glasgow’s coffee drinkers were keen to recycle their cups, but only 12 per cent were able to do so properly.

Keep Scotland Beautiful’s Cup Movement, which aims to tackle the 500 million single-use cups that are used and disposed of each year in Scotland, has so far collected over 300,000 cups for recycling from workplaces, shopping centres and travel hubs around Glasgow.

Paul Wallace, Campaigns and Social Innovation Manager at Keep Scotland Beautiful, commented: “Everyone needs to play their part if we are to reduce the nearly 500 million cups that end up in landfill or as litter each year. #TakeItBack is a perfect example of this, bringing together the council, retailers and the public to create change.

“Glaswegians told us that they wanted to recycle their cups and that is our response. Ultimately, this initiative is providing the opportunity for everyone to make a small yet impactful choice by recycling their single-use cup.

“Initial data from Pret indicates that they are recycling an average of 15,000 cups per month across their five participating stores. We hope that by raising awareness of the in-house cup recycling facilities available, we will see more and more people holding on to their cups to ensure that they get recycled.”

Councillor Richardson, City Convenor for Sustainability and Carbon Reduction, added: “The Cup Movement in Glasgow is about reducing the consumption of single-use cups, promoting reusable alternatives and making single-use cups easier to recycle. I hope that people will stop to think when they are throwing away their single-use cup, pay attention to the labelling and #TakeItBack.”

DS Smith’s Coffee Cup Drop Box

Glasgow’s drive to increase coffee cup recycling will be supported by DS Smith, which will be rolling out its Coffee Cup Drop Box recycling service to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) throughout the city. The Drop Boxes, which are capable of collecting up to 700 cups, are collected by Royal Mail Relay when full and returned to DS Smith’s Kemsley paper mill in Kent.

The packaging company is proving to be a major player in the development of coffee cup recycling infrastructure –  DS Smith announced in 2018 that it has the potential to recycle all of the UK’s coffee cup waste at its Kemsley Mill, and has since expanded its recycling scheme to Europe.

Tom Campbell-White, European Strategic Development Director for DS Smith, commented: “We are proud to be supporting both Keep Scotland Beautiful and their efforts to increase coffee cup recycling in Scotland, beginning with Glasgow.

“Since announcing in 2018 that we had the potential to recycle up to 2.5 billion cups at our paper recycling mill we have been working with stakeholders to work out how to collect more cups for Recycling.

“The introduction of our Coffee Cup Drop Box was a significant development in improving coffee cup collection infrastructure, and to be working with Keep Scotland Beautiful to target the 500 million cups in Scotland is really exciting for us.”