Veolia will collect 120m coffee cups for recycling in 2019 – a dramatic 300% increase from this time last year, following a successful 12 months pioneering its in-store service across the UK with the world’s most recognised brands; Costa, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Caffè Nero.
Aspirations from these leading chains have been matched by Veolia’s innovative collection and sorting solutions, where coffee cups are segregated in store to prevent contamination, ensuring a smoother, more effective process. Encouraged by the programme’s success, we will continue to work with our customers to reach as many people as possible.
Veolia is already supporting Costa on its cup recycling programme that aims to recycle as many disposable cups as Costa sells by 2020. For every tonne collected for recycling, Costa provide a financial supplement. This helps to subsidise further collections and cup recycling initiatives.
Alongside the national scheme, we have also piloted a solution in partnership with Westminster City Council and Heart of London Business Alliance, to make recycling coffee cups even more convenient for busy people on the move. Street sweepers and dedicated bins situated in the heart of London have helped us to collect 100,000 coffee cups which may otherwise have been littered or included in general waste streams.
Richard Kirkman, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Veolia UK & Ireland says: “With a storm rightly brewing over disposable coffee cups in recent months, Veolia has responded by intensifying its efforts across the country to collect, sort and recycle millions of coffee cups which would otherwise be discarded. Our in-store and on the go solutions have real potential to capture every coffee cup in the country.
“We’re heading in the right direction, but there is still plenty more to do, with millions of disposable cups still not entering recycling streams. To continue this progress, more organisations need to provide in-store solutions and more consumers to use them.”
Veolia is the leading coffee cup recycler in the country with facilities which process, clean, separate and bale disposed coffee cups ready for recycling. With a number of different service options, ranging from using a post-back service where coffee cups are sent from stores to our facilities, to bulk collections from customer premises, Veolia now has the most cost effective national service in the UK for cup recycling, providing an unrivalled, consolidated end-to-end service for coffee cup recycling.