DS Smith has cracked the UK coffee cup recycling challenge!

DS Smith is pleased to announce that our Coffee Cup Drop Boxes could recycle millions more of the UK’s coffee cups every year at our paper mill in Kent.

Our campaign for coffee cups recycling

The recyclability of paper coffee cups is regularly in the headlines, with demands for better recycling firmly on the agendas of governments, organisations and consumers. DS Smith went about to tackle the challenge.

In 2018, after a series of trials we announced that our paper mill in Kent has the capacity to recycle up to 2.5 billion coffee cups each year – the challenge was then on to put in place a collection infrastructure to make sure coffee cups could be collected for recycling. 

We worked with the coffee cup supply chain, policymakers, the recycling industry, and coffee lovers across the UK to build a sustainable, long-term recycling solution.

Now, after further successful trials with key partners around collection methods, we have launched our Coffee Cup Drop Box and recycling service.

In a YouGov commissioned survey, DS Smith identified key consumer behaviours in the use and disposal of hot drinks cups. Our infographic below illustrates the findings. 

Source: All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 2002 adults. Fieldwork was undertaken between 8th-9th August 2019. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of GB adults (aged 18+).