Partnership set to recycle millions of coffee cups in Glasgow

DS Smith and Keep Scotland Beautiful are teaming up on the Cup Movement in Glasgow initiative to tackle coffee cup recycling in the Greater Glasgow area.

Last year alone, Scotland used 500 Million single use coffee cups, with Greater Glasgow contributing approximately 95 Million to that staggering total.

With cup recycling rates at only 4%, over 91 million cups end up in landfill or being burnt every year, with many of them being discarded as litter that blights Glasgow’s communities.

Keep Scotland Beautiful have created a city-wide collaboration to tackle this serious waste issue, named Cup Movement, which is focused initially on Glasgow.

The aim is to create awareness, provide guidance and sign up as many businesses  to ensure collectively a strong and immediate positive impact is made on coffee cup recycling, as well as other waste reduction measures.

DS Smith is now working closely with Cup Movement to roll out the successful Coffee Cup Drop Box recycling service – a uniquely designed, fully recyclable, cardboard bin that can collect up to 700 cups.

It is backed up by a nationwide collection service which means that full boxes can be easily collected and delivered for recycling.

Its unique design is well-suited for overcoming some of the barriers to cup recycling, particularly for SMEs, and we are excited to be rolling it out as part of our city-wide initiative in Glasgow

Made from recycled paper, the box can be used to collect coffee cups from businesses across Glasgow. Each box holds around 700 cups and once full it is collected by Royal Mail Relay

and returned to DS Smith’s recycled paper mill, the UK’s largest, to be recycled back into new paper packaging products.

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”

Catherine Gee, Operations Director for Keep Scotland Beautiful said: “Cup Movement aims to work across all sectors to find solutions for reducing the amount of waste associated with single-use cups. We are delighted to have the support of DS Smith and to include the Coffee Cup Drop Box in our suite of interventions.

“Its unique design is well-suited for overcoming some of the barriers to cup recycling, particularly for SMEs, and we are excited to be rolling it out as part of our city-wide initiative in Glasgow.”