James Cropper, based in Kendal, has developed CupCycle technology – taking the virgin paper in takeaway cups and ‘upcycling’ it into ‘deluxe’ paper.
Last week, the company said it celebrated a “landmark moment” when it received its first load of coffee cups from a London materials recycling facility (MRF).
London-based waste management firm, Paper Round, collects from 5,000 businesses in the capital and has a sorting facility based in Purfleet, Essex.
ColourForm
Commenting on the delivery, Richard Burnett, market development manager at James Cropper said: “We are delighted to be getting such good quality material from a MRF. It’s vital the coffee cups are collected in a separate stream so that the virgin paper used to make them can be recycled back into valuable products like our custom-made papers and COLOURFORM plastic-free packaging.”
Made using renewable paper fibre from “well managed” forests and recycled coffee cups, James Cropper say that ColourForm can be manufactured in any colour or shape, is fully recyclable with household paper and is naturally biodegradable (see letsrecycle.com story).
The process involves removing the polyethylene coating that makes take-away cups waterproof, while preserving the precious paper fibres. The paper mill pays for the used coffee cups.
Coffee cup recycling was soft-launched to Paper Round’s clients in October 2017 and will roll out fully this month. A special tough, colour-coded sack enables coffee cups to be collected at the same time as other recycling. This means there’s no need to send another vehicle to collect the cups, saving on emissions and helping to curtail air pollution, the company said.
“We look forward to recycling many more cups from our customers as we roll the scheme out.”
Bill Swan
Paper Round
Bill Swan, director at Paper Round said: “We are very proud to be recycling coffee cups. Paper Round is all about real recycling, so working with James Cropper to ensure that our customers’ cups are made into high quality paper was very important to us. We look forward to recycling many more cups from our customers as we roll the scheme out.”
Costa
Coffee cups have been in the spotlight in recent weeks. The news follows an announcement by Costa last month that it is committing itself to recycling the same volume of cups it puts onto the market and pledging to recycle up to 500 million coffee cups a year by 2020 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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