In 2019, Scotland made its way through 500 million single-use coffee cups, with Greater Glasgow contributing almost 100 million cups alone. With coffee cup recycling rates at only 4%, over 90 million cups ended up in landfill or incineration to produce energy-from-waste (EfW).
Focussing initially on Glasgow, Keep Scotland Beautiful has created a city-wide programme called the Cup Movement®, to increase awareness, guide businesses, and reduce coffee cup waste. As part of this programme, DS Smith will roll out its successful Coffee Cup Drop Box recycling service.
Made from 100% recycled materials, our Coffee Cup Drop Boxes can hold up to 700 used cups, and once full, we will collect the boxes in conjunction with Royal Mail Relay and take it to our paper mill in Kemsley for recycling back into new paper products.
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.
— Tom Campbell-White, European Strategic Development Director at DS Smith
