James Cropper get their hands on first load of London coffee cups

After the shock news that 5,000 coffee cups are disposed of in the UK every minute, we’re all keen to find out the truth behind the new cup recycling schemes popping up. How are they being collected? How are they kept separate from other recycling? What process allows them to be recycled, and into what exactly?
James Cropper are based in Kendal and have developed CupCyclingTM technology. They take the virgin paper in takeaway cups and upcycle it into deluxe paper.
Capacity for Recycling Millions of Paper Cups
The team at James Cropper are hungry for cups. After investing in this superb technology, they are relying on businesses to do the right thing and set up a coffee cup recycling scheme with a forward-thinking recycling company.
Well, a landmark moment occurred last week when James Cropper was excited to receive their first load of coffee cups from a London materials recycling facility (MRF). Paper Round collects from 5,000 businesses in the Capital with their sorting facility based in Purfleet, Essex. 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 COLOURFORMTM plastic-free packaging’.
Paper Round collects the full gamut of waste materials and are known for pioneering new forms of recycling to improve their clients’ environmental performance. Coffee cup recycling was soft-launched to Paper Round’s clients in October 2017 and will roll out in April this year. 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.
Alison Roe, Director at Paper Round said, ‘We are delighted 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.’