Boxing clever

Leading British recycler DS Smith has teamed up with Royal Mail for a new coffee cup recycling scheme which could see hundreds of millions of cups recycled each year.

DS Smith, a leading sustainable packaging solutions provider, has called on independent businesses across the UK to help stop the scourge of coffee cup waste.

In the UK up to 7.8 million cups end up in landfill or are burned every day, with 58% of British workers disposing of their cups at work - making it a critical battleground in the fight to recycle. To respond to this, and following successful trials with partners including EY, DS Smith has launched its specially designed ‘Coffee Cup Drop Box’.

Made from recycled paper, the box can be used to collect coffee cups from across the UK and is available to the 2.7 million businesses operating in the UK. Each box holds around 700 cups and once full it is collected by Royal Mail and returned to DS Smith’s recycled paper mill, the UK’s largest, to be recycled back into new paper packaging products.

Jochen Behr, head of recycling at DS Smith, said: ‘Through our Coffee Cup Drop Box we can provide the much-needed national infrastructure to reduce the 7.8 million coffee cups that are currently falling through the gap on commutes, in offices and across the UK.’

Despite a major push and incentives to use reusable coffee cups, research shows that of the 46% of Brits who had a reusable coffee cup, only 12% used it all the time when purchasing a hot drink and 41% admitted to rarely or never using it.

Lily Heinemann, head of corporate responsibility, corporate reporting, community investment and events, said: ‘The number of disposable cups used each year in the UK is currently estimated to be around three billion. That’s a huge amount of waste. This is a fantastic initiative, which will hopefully make a huge difference to the number of coffee cups that end up in landfill. We’re really proud to support this scheme.’