DS Smith, Keep Scotland Beautiful to promote coffee cup recycling

London-based DS Smith and Keep Scotland Beautiful have partnered on the Cup Movement, which is an initiative designed to offer coffee cup recycling in the Greater Glasgow, Scotland, area.

According to a news release from DS Smith, people in Scotland used about 500 million single-use coffee cups in 2019, but only about 4 percent of single-use coffee cups are recycled. To address this issue, Keep Scotland Beautiful created a citywide program called the Cup Movement to increase awareness, guide businesses and reduce coffee cup waste. As a part of the program, DS Smith plans to roll out its Coffee Cup Drop Box recycling service.

Made from 100 percent recycled materials, DS Smith’s Coffee Cup Drop Boxes can hold up to 700 used cups, the company reports. Once full, DS Smith will collect the boxes in conjunction with Royal Mail Relay and take the boxes to its paper mill in Kemsley, England, to recycle the cups into new paper products.

Keep Scotland Beautiful

“We are proud to be supporting both Keep Scotland Beautiful and their efforts to increase coffee cup recycling in Scotland, beginning with Glasgow,” says Tom Campbell-White, the European strategic development director at DS Smith. “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 the 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.”

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

According to a news release from DS Smith, both DS Smith and Keep Scotland Beautiful are inviting independent businesses to reach out if they are interested in using the Coffee Cup Drop Box or in introducing a coffee cup recycling scheme.