Veolia to Recycle 120m Coffee Cups in the UK Next Year

120 million coffee cups will be collected for recycling by Veolia in the UK during 2019 - a 300% increase from this time last year, following a 12 months rolling out its in-store service across the UK brands including Costa, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Caffè Nero.

120 million coffee cups will be collected for recycling by Veolia in the UK during 2019 - a 300% increase from this time last year, following 12 months rolling out its in-store service across the UK with brands including Costa, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Caffè Nero.

Under the scheme coffee cups are segregated in store to prevent contamination, ensuring a smoother, more effective process. Encouraged by the programme’s success, we the company said that it will continue to work with its customers to reach as many people as possible.

Veolia noted that it is already supporting Costa on its cup recycling programme which 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, Veolia has also piloted a solution in partnership with Westminster City Council and Heart of London Business Alliance, to make recycling coffee cups more convenient for busy people on the move. Street sweepers and dedicated bins situated in the heart of London have helped the firm collect 100,000 coffee cups which may otherwise have been littered or included in general waste streams.

“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,” said Richard Kirkman, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer, Veolia UK & Ireland.

“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,” he added.

According to Veolia it is the biggest 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 offers a national service in the UK.