Thousands of us will buy a cup of coffee, enjoy it and then throw it in the mixed recycling. The question is what happens to this cup? It is a common misconception that all coffee cups can be recycled, especially when they have liquid in the cup. We want to bring awareness to the contamination this causes when recycling. Unfortunately because the cup is being thrown into the bin this causes the other dry recycling in the bin to get wet/ contaminated which effectively means the whole bin then has to go into general waste.
In this blog we are going to look into the sustainability issues with coffee cups and how to avoid cross contamination of recycling.
The sustainability issues related to coffee cups
· They are composite materials.
· 2.5 billion coffee cups are thrown away every year.
· 1.5 billion litres of water go into making disposable coffee cups in the U.K every year.
· Cups that claim to be compostable must be transported to an industrial composting site. This increase their carbon footprint.
· Coffee cups in the U.Ks landfill are estimated to have the same carbon output as 33,000 cars.
· One million trees are cut down to produce these cups.
As stated above the misconceptions of the coffee cup is largely what means they are being disposed of incorrectly. In addition, we buy our coffee from various shops and most believe that each cup is made of the same thing with the same waste process – this is not the case.
How to avoid cross contamination
We believe to avoid cross contamination in the first place it is best to avoid using a disposable cup in the first place. The image below displays the waste hierarchy and the preferred method of dealing with waste. Showing that prevention is most preferred and disposal is the least preferred. The perfect way to avoid disposal is by using a reusable cup.
Using a reusable cup has many benefits such as being personable to you, reduces the amount of disposable cups produced and incorrectly disposed. There are often monetary incentives with high street cafes in using your own cup and at University of Leicester we have our own monetary incentive with YourLSP.
What is the No Tricks up Our Sleeve scheme?
The ‘No tricks up our sleeve’ scheme has been created as a way to help reduce the use of disposable cups across the University campus. The Craft Coffee branded travel cups are an environmentally friendly option you can use when you’re at home, at work, at uni or just out and about.
How does the No Tricks up Our Sleeve programme work?
Buy the branded sleeve for £5 from any outlet & get your first drink free!
Enjoy your drink in one of the Craft reusable travel cups, and once finished, you can return your cup to any participating outlet till point to be washed and stored, but keep hold of your sleeve.
When buying your next drink, show your sleeve to our staff and it will be served in a clean Craft cup and you’ll receive a 15p discount for being sustainable.
We are passing the savings on to you as the discount is the cost price of the disposable cup and lid that you have stopped from going into UK landfill and a thank you for making a difference sustainably.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Emily Spencer from the fantastic University of Leicester social impact team.