How to start cup recycling

HOW TO START CUP RECYCLING

#THECUPFUND #INTHELOOP

Introduction

HUBBUB AND CUP RECYCLING

Hubbub has been working to find solutions to cup recycling for the past three years, from a single cup bin in Manchester with the #1MoreShot campaign to recycling 5 million cups in one year with the #SquareMileChallenge in the City of London, and more recently establishing cup recycling in Leeds through #LeedsByExample. We launched #TheCupFund to roll out these projects to other parts of the country where there is a need for cup recycling to be introduced.

This guide will offer Hubbub’s top tips on how to introduce and maintain coffee cup recycling, based on what we’ve learned over the years.

The issue

8 million cups are thrown away every day in the UK – only 4% are recycled.

It’s well known that the UK is a country that loves a cup of tea, but increasingly we’ve become keen coffee drinkers too. The other change in our society is that we’re drinking more tea and coffee when we’re out and about – which results in a lot of disposable cups being used.

Coffee cups currently can’t be recycled in most mixed recycling bins as they’re made mixed-materials - paper with a plastic lining to make the cup waterproof.

The good news is if the cups are collected separately, they can be recycled. There are three plants in the UK that specialise in doing just that, and they have lots of capacity to recycle cups – Ace UK in West Yorkshire, DS Smith in Kent and James Cropper in Cumbria.

What’s missing is network of recycling bins to collect them and get them to the recycling plants – that’s where you come in!

Coffee cups of any size

Which cups can be recycled?

Coffee cups from any shop

Compostable cups Corrugated cardboard cups

Compostable cups cannot always be recycled, it depends on which facility they are sent to. DS Smith are able to recycle them, but James Cropper and Ace UK cannot.

Corrugated cardboard cups cannot always be recycled –check with your end facility

Note: Compostable or biodegradable cups will not decompose as intended unless they are collected separately and sent to a specialist industrial composting facility.

Lids, liquids & accessories

• Plastic lids and cardboard sleeves need to be removed from the cup for recycling.

• Plastic lids may be recyclable in the plastic or mixed recycling bin. Cardboard sleeves may be recyclable in paper/ cardboard recycling. Please check with your waste management provider.

• Any remaining liquid can be poured into a liquid reservoir built into the design of the cup bin (if available), poured down a sink, or preferably drunk!

• Plastic stirrers and straws are often not recyclable. Wooden stirrers can be composted and disposed of with food waste.

5 steps for a successful cup recycling project

You’ve chosen locations for cup recycling. What next? Whether you’re implementing coffee cup recycling across a whole town/city, or at one business, there are five general steps to success.

Step 1 : Engage the right people

Before launching, engage all relevant stakeholders, and ensure they are both well-informed and supportive of the project.

Who is a relevant stakeholder for your project? This could be anyone involved from the sale of cups to the collection of waste in your chosen area, who could make your project run smoothly – or slow it down. While you probably have most of the relevant stakeholders on board, it’s a useful exercise to map out each step of the cup recycling process for your project, to see if you’ve missed anyone.

In the high street or a shopping centre for example, this might be neighbouring retailers or businesses, who could train their staff or share communications to amplify awareness of the scheme in the area.

In an indoor space, this would be your cleaning team, who could remove small amounts of contamination, the communications team who could amplify your message internally and with visitors, and even admin support staff, who could act as champions for the scheme in their respective teams.

Step 2 : Set up the service

Once all stakeholders are on board, you’re ready to set up the recycling service.

• Set up a collection schedule with your waste contractor. Based on your understanding of footfall in the area, make sure the frequency of collections will never leave the bins overflowing.

• Purchase recycling bins and plan where they’ll go. Take advantage of the discounts available to Cup Fund winners (see separate document). Check in with other project teams in your city to make sure you choose the same bins, where it makes sense. Consistency of bins on the high street is key to improving recycling.

• Decide on a launch date to introduce coffee cup recycling. Where appropriate, make it part of something bigger. Make sure you give yourself time to launch it properly, it’s better to wait and do it well than to rush it and not do the campaign justice.

• Be patient and keep an eye on how it goes. People may not get it straight away! Like with any new service, there are likely to be teething problems. So, it’s a good idea to get feedback and have a way for people to raise any issues they have. Expect that you will have to tweak the system and don’t see that as failure – it’s all part of the process. Allocate time, resources and people to tackle teething issues quickly in the first few weeks.

Step 3 : Communicate to engage your audience

Your audience should know:

• Why you are recycling cups. Inform your audiences about what the issue is with coffee cups and how many are used daily in the UK or even better, in your chosen project area. Updating them with how many cups have been recycled each week or month will encourage them too!

• That coffee cups only get recycled when placed in the coffee cup recycling bins, after separating the lid and disposing of any leftover liquid. Contamination is one of the biggest challenges that your project will face.

• What happens to the coffee cups when they are recycled? Can you provide some examples of products made from recycled cups to show people the value of recycled cups?

Bear in mind that the level of public understanding on this issue is quite low – in a 2019 survey conducted by Hubbub, 71% of people didn’t know that cups needed to go in their own recycling bin to be recycled.

However, there is an appetite to do the right thing - 95% of people surveyed thought that cups should be able to be recycled.

Step 4 : Measure your success

• Make sure your waste contractor can give you data on the quantity of cups you’re collecting on a monthly basis, so you can feedback and communicate the success to relevant stakeholders and audiences.

• Analysing your data in the first months after launch will ensure you can make any tweaks needed on site to maximise the impact of your service and embed this new behaviour with people in your project area.

• Circulating a survey to stakeholders can provide useful insights into awareness of the recycling facilities and their usage.

• Contamination is when bins collect materials other than the material you’re trying to collect. Talk to your waste contractor and / or cleaning team to gain insight into usage and contamination patterns.

• If contamination or usage rates is an issue, create a focus group of stakeholders to get user feedback.

Step 5 : Tell the story

Setting up a successful coffee cup recycling scheme is something to be proud of! Celebrate success internally and externally and inspire others.

We’ve got more tips later in this guide for how to communicate about your project.

Choose how to collect cups

When choosing how to collect cups, consider the space you have available, any security requirements of the space you’re in, whether you need to collect liquids separately, and your budget.

Public facing bins

There are lots of different models of cup recycling bins and Hubbub has negotiated discounts with a number of the main bin manufacturers, see separate spreadsheet for further details.

IMPORTANT! Whichever you choose, cup recycling bins should always be positioned next to a general waste bin and ideally a recycling bin as well. If they are positioned on their own, they will get used as a rubbish bin.

Indoor vs. Outdoor

Indoor bins can be smaller, so they can fit spaces better, while outdoor bins need to be bigger, more robust and designed to withstand weather conditions. The Leeds By Example campaign found that bright orange cup bins on the street were easily recognisable and popular on social media.

Stacking bins

In some instances, recycling bins that require cups to be stacked causes the bin to fill up quickly and overflow which then causes litter, due to people putting the cup in upside down or with the lid on. They are not robust enough to be used in an on-street environment. We advise against stacking bins in an on-street setting, but in managed spaces they can work providing there are clear communications and they are checked and emptied regularly.

Public facing bins

Clear tube stacking bins

They’re effective at collecting high-quality cups in managed spaces, as the visual nudge helps people separate out the right parts. However, they generally don’t collect large volumes of cups, so consider what’s most suitable for your location.

Separation of liquid

Choosing a bin that separates out liquid can help reduce contamination and improve the quality of cups collected, but it can also be a challenge to empty and will need regular cleaning to keep it fresh. In our experience in #LeedsByExample, we found that in managed spaces, it is helpful to have an option to pour away liquids. But for on street bins, the public are unlikely to use it and the amount of excess liquid collected was minimal. Another option is to attached tubes to the sides of bins for collecting lids and liquids.

Recycle reward machines

Considering using a recycle reward machine for your cup recycling scheme?

When trialled in Leeds, recycle machines were popular with the public and helped reduce contamination in recycling bins. Recycle reward machines for cups were tested in the city and while only 5% of discount vouchers (5,10 or 20p) were redeemed, the machines were well used and collected high quality cups. Replacing the financial reward with playful animations or charity donations was just as effective.

Benefits

• They are a good tool to engage the public.

• They crush up to 400 cups per machine, meaning they need emptying less frequently.

• Most effective in closed-loop, managed spaces with high footfall, where people both consume and dispose of food and drink packaging.

Negatives

• The machines are considerably more expensive than equivalent bins.

• Some indoor recycling bins were just as effective.

Working with retailers

The large coffee chains such as Starbucks, Costa Coffee or McDonald’s may already be recycling any coffee cup instore. Retailers may opt to encourage customers to leave their used cups on the side, so that staff can collect, empty and stack them, meaning they collect better quality cups and take up less space.

Work with local retailers to integrate their cup collection scheme with yours. For example, retailers can also help you share key cup recycling messages at the point of sale.

How to brand your project

From Hubbub’s experience in the Leeds by Example trial, we know that clear, simple and consistent communications from the point of purchase to the point of disposal and online can help double the amount of people recycling food and drink packaging.

Building awareness and behaviour change takes time, as people adapt to and use new infrastructure. Also bear in mind that people do not linger for long at bins - our observations in Leeds found 92% of people spent under two seconds throwing something away at an on-street bin! So, messages need to be short, simple and bold.

The public respond to visual cues like bright colours, icons and aperture shape, as well as messaging. The Leeds by Example trial found that simply changing the messaging and colour of existing bins had a significant impact on the amount of recycling collected.

Icons and colour

We recommend all coffee cup recycling schemes follow the below branding guidelines, to ensure consistency across schemes - this will make coffee cup recycling more recognisable for the general public and therefore maximise your impact:

CUP ICON

This is especially important to include in your branding. The Cup icon is recognisable and is already being used in Leeds and other UK cities. Using it will maximise the chances of people understanding your messaging. This strategy led to 82% of the public in Leeds City Centre remembering seeing something about the campaign.

Any use of the cup icon should have an infilled swoosh arrow.

COLOUR

Orange is the official colour WRAP recommends for the collection of coffee cups and cartons. Please use the following colours:

Orange for the cup: RAL 2003

Navy outline: RAL 9004

White background: RAL 9003

Of course, we encourage you to build on these guidelines and develop a local identity that will resonate in your community!

Recycling is an everyday, banal subject for most people. To engage a wide audience, your message needs to be eye-catching and easy to act on.

How to approach messaging

Here are some top tips on how to approach messaging, from Hubbub’s previous campaigns:

• Keep your messages simple, playful and positive, avoid recycling jargon which the public don’t understand and avoid trying to guilt-trip people into recycling!

• Use images and icons and avoid using too much text

• Use bright, bold colours and messages to stand out in busy high footfall areas

• Make it fun. Corny puns and bad jokes often help! The benefits outweigh the barriers when it comes to changing behaviours.

• Consistent communications are crucial. Inconsistent messaging to the public about recycling is a significant barrier to recycling in the UK. Aim for clear, simple and consistent communications from the point of purchase to the point of disposal.

• Tailor messages to local audiences, for example using local dialect or playing on local pride of place. In Leeds by Example, we took a playful approach, using a Yorkshire dialect on the bin messaging: “Empty plastic and cans, nowt else”

How to approach messaging

• Visualise the issue and offer local statistics. This helps to engage people on recycling and change behaviour. This can easily be done by dividing the annual or daily national cup statistics by the local population or footfall of your site or high street. Showing what recycling coffee cups can be turned into helps convey a message of the value of ‘waste’ and the circular economy. But the message needs to be simple and tangible. Consider working with local artists/setbuilders to create a public installation showing the scale of the issue.

• Use striking cup stats such as:

• We use almost 3 billion cups per year in the UK, enough to stretch around the world 5.5 times

• Every day, we bin 8 million coffee cups in the UK, that’s more than 5,500 per minute

• Less than 4% of coffee cups in the UK are currently recycled – be part of the solution!

• Nudge messaging at the point of disposal – for example arrows on general waste bins pointing towards the cup bin, to encourage people to use the cup recycling bins for their cup bins.

• Learn and refine. Don’t expect to get everything right straightaway! Try, learn, then refine.

Raise awareness

Clear communications and an awareness-raising campaign are required alongside the introduction of new cup recycling infrastructure. Make some noise to raise awareness when you introduce cup recycling. This allows you to ‘warm up’ the public to the idea of recycling coffee cups in an engaging way.

In the Leeds by Example trial, recycling awareness and behaviour increased after the communications launch, suggesting a clear correlation between the communications activities and use of the new recycling bins.

Communicate at launch

• Create a story around it which will engage local media e.g. ‘the first time cup recycling has been introduced to xx town’, ‘part of the UK’s biggest ever push to scale cup recycling’.

• Think about how you can visualise the issue to connect with the public and local media e.g. at Trinity shopping centre in Leeds, we visualised the issue by creating a giant cup made of cups, showing people how many cups are consumed in Leeds - 600 every 10 minutes!

• Create a compelling social media strategy using graphics, good photography and playful messages.

• Think about who are the stakeholders and influencers in your area who can help you to spread the campaign messages online.

• Host a launch event and invite partners, stakeholders, local media and influencers.

Getting into the media

The Leeds by Example trial found that the media campaign helped to raise awareness among the public that new recycling facilities were now available, and what items should be recycled.

Take advantage of any PR support you might have to create a tailored media strategy that will amplify the impact of your project.

Using social media

Consistent messages on social media can support your physical communications and bin infrastructure.

Amplify Your Reach: Amplify the ‘reach’ of your campaign messages by asking relevant partners to share your content and use locally targeted social media ads, for example on Facebook or Instagram.

To make sharing on social media easier, create a short communications guide like this one and share it with all relevant local partners. It should contain key messages, links to any available assets and suggested social media posts. This helps to create a consistent, recognisable brand.

Who might be a relevant local partner? A managed space like a retail store, shopping centre, university, local coffee or large local employer could be worth talking to. The Leeds by Example trial showed that engaging managed places to share consistent recycling communications helps to amplify messages and change behaviour to increase quality and quantity of recycling on-the-go.

Who might be a good local influencer to help spread the message? This could be a public figure such as a local politician, a local celebrity or sportsperson, or local green groups. Spend some time brainstorming this with colleagues who know the area well, then reach out to the influencers on social media.

Use social media to positively reinforce social norms. Recycling

is something that many people do because it’s a habit they get used to and which is reinforced by seeing other people doing it. Celebrate how many people are now recycling cups, use active language such as ‘we recycle’, rather than pleading with people to ask that they recycle, and avoid guilt-tripping people!

Here are some resources to get you started on your social media plan:

Facebook: Social media cards are a great way of communicating your key messages. Repeat posts aren’t advised on Facebook. You can repeat key messaging, but our sample posts give examples of how to share key messages in various ways.

Twitter: Sample tweets and social media cards are available for usage on Twitter.

LinkedIn: Sample posts and social media cards can be shared via LinkedIn too. This is a fantastic way to spread campaign messaging and to inform your professional network about the campaign.

Instagram: Instagram can be a very useful channel for engaging a younger audience in the campaign. Don’t post too often and use striking photos e.g. of your new bins when they are installed, or of an installation if you use one.

Indoor signage

Here are some resources to get you started on putting up signage, like posters and table talkers, in key indoor spots within your project area:

Location: Placing posters at the point of purchase is useful, but it’s mostly important to have communications around the point of cup disposal i.e. near coffee cup recycling points, on office floors, in communal areas, in lifts, around existing bin infrastructure etc. Table-Talkers are designed for use on tables and counters in cafeterias and canteens.

Size: You can print posters in whatever size you think will work best. However, the bigger they are, the more noticeable they’ll be!

INDOOR SIGNAGE

Setting up cup recycling at offices

We interviewed some of the businesses that started cup recycling as part of the Square Mile Challenge, one year on, to find out what had worked and what had not gone well, and what advice they’d give to other organisations setting up cup recycling.

This guide draws on their insights as well as our broader experience to help you set up successful cup recycling within businesses, whether you’re a large office, a restaurant or a shop. This may be useful for you when trying to recruit local businesses to your campaign.

Why recycle coffee cups?

According to our research and experience, introducing a coffee cup recycling service has many benefits to a business. You will:

• Increase your site’s recycling rate.

• Show leadership on a high-profile issue that employees care about.

• Start a much broader conversation about reducing waste

• Encourage employee, client and partner behaviour change towards recycling and reusable products .

• Improve existing recycling by removing the cups which cause contamination.

• Be able to create a closed loop system by buying products made from the recycled coffee cup material for use in your office, canteen and beyond.

Top tips for office cup recycling

Start conversations. Engage, don’t tell. Involve your staff in decision making about recycling in the workplace. Where you can, tap into people’s passions and interests. What do your staff care about? You could use this as a hook to engage people. Consider using voting bins to engage staff.

Nudge behaviour. You can prompt people to make a decision at the point of action such as by using recycling reminders at key locations and placing bins in strategic locations. Add reminders about key actions e.g. ‘empty your cup’.

Be authentic. Tell your story. Why is recycling coffee cups important to you as a business? What are you doing about it and what can employees do?

Be visual. Use videos, GIFs, infographics and eye-catching materials to get the message across. See our branding and messaging guide to help ensure you use consistent icons and colours. People are more likely to use bins that are bright, colourful and eye-catching. Visualising the amount of waste produced can help people understand the problem, so use data and storytelling.

Make it easy: Make recycling the obvious, default thing to do, by using clear, consistent communications and place general waste bin next to all recycling bins, so that people always have the option to make the right decision and only recycle what can be recycled. Where possible provide a place that people can empty out any liquid before recycling their cup.

Build a community. People are more likely to follow instruction from their peers, so create a team of sustainability champions within your business.

Use social norms. Recycling is something that many people do because it’s the norm; a habit that people get used to and which is reinforced by seeing other people doing it. Use active language – ‘we recycle’ rather than pleading with people to ask that they recycle. And don’t try to guilt-trip people!

Pride of place. Evidence shows people are more likely to recycle in clean, managed spaces. Explain how staff or tenants are contributing to keep their place of work pleasant or costs down by recycling their coffee cups.

Make it topical. Does it fit with celebratory time of year, a wider event or even something that people are talking about in the office.

Make it fun. Corny puns and bad jokes often help! The benefits have to outweigh the barriers when it comes to changing behaviours. Think about what could stop people from recycling their coffee cups versus what would motivate people to change their behaviour.

Learn and refine. Don’t expect to get everything right straightaway. Try, learn then refine.

INDOOR SIGNAGE

Setting up cup recycling in shopping centres

Shopping centres can play a crucial role given they’re often locations where people both buy and dispose of coffee cups. If you plan to involve a local shopping centre in your cup recycling campaign, this section shows you how.

Why recycle coffee cups?

Here’s how you can explain to stakeholders at the shopping centre why it’s important to recycle coffee cups:

1. Coffee cups have a value: The virgin paper on the outside of the cup is of a very high quality and can be turned into great products like Designer shopping bags or packaging for electronic items. The cost per tonne of cups has been guaranteed so there’s demand from the waste industry to collect cups. Part of the challenge is getting those cups from the people who drink them, to the three plants in the UK that recycle them, which is where you come in.

2. Reduce contamination in your recycling bins: Coffee cups and the milky liquid and tea bags they often contain, contaminate other recycling meaning that whole batches can be spoilt and possibly end up in landfill or being burnt. By asking people to separate out their cups you can improve the quality of your dry mixed recycling and increase your recycling rates.

3. Enhance your reputation and share good practice: Our trial in Leeds shows 95% of people think cups should be recycled and they would recycle more if there were more cup bins around. Shopping centres have the opportunity to reach the right audience with the message that cups can be recycled – and you can show you’re leading on best practice at the same time.

The opportunity

Hubbub trials show that some managed space bins can have up to half the amount of contamination compared to on-street bins. This is because, in managed spaces, there is more of a social norm to conform and people may have more time to choose the correct bin.

Before getting started, it’s important to consider the site and how cup recycling might work there. These questions might help:

On-site retailers: Some chains such as Costa Coffee, McDonald’s and Starbucks offer in store cup collections nationwide, so check with your retailers whether this is something they already do.

Bins: Are you able to install public facing bins, as well as support cup recycling for retailers by providing back of house bins?

Engage the right people: Speak with the facilities team to understand how collections might work and how you might deal with emptying leftover liquid. Get the senior management and communication team on-board.

Map key routes: Are there busy through routes where commuters might walk with their cups or obvious areas where people linger and dispose of their cups? Think about where bins and communications might be best placed.

Communications: Are there opportunities to promote the wider campaign around the shopping centre?

Make a splash

Once the new cup recycling infrastructure is in place, raise awareness of the issue and the new recycling bins.

Keep it consistent by working with retailers to have the same messages popping up across your site, so people keep seeing the same messages and cup recycling becomes second nature.

Ideas could include:

• Launching with a new installation about how many cups the centre produces per week

• Linking the service to another relevant event, such as something food or drink related

• Offering some freebies or a competition – how about a reusable cup or stationery made from recycled coffee cups?

• Floor vinyl stickers to direct people to new cup bins

• A public running total of how many cups have been collected to show impact

• Adverts on digital screens reminding people only the cup goes in the cup bin

• Cup recycling messages on parking tickets, within retailers at the point of sale and on the back of toilet doors, plus social media.

Measure and tweak

Monitoring the quality and quantity of what you’re collecting can help to tweak the number and location of your bins to find out what works best for your chosen area.

Use this measurement and evaluation template to track your progress on key metrics.

Measuring the impact you’re having is invaluable to express to the public and your retailers and keep everyone a keen bean to recycle a latte cups. Keep chai-ing!

Why not find some champion cup recyclers who can keep an eye on things and help make it the social norm to recycle your cup?

INDOOR SIGNAGE

Setting up cup recycling on the high street

Unfortunately, contamination is a big concern with on-street recycling. Here is what we found works well to reduce contamination of on-street cup recycling bins on the high street, from the Leeds by Example trial.

Positioning of bins

Our experience shows most people use the bin nearest to them and want recycling to be easy and convenient.

Here are couple of our top tips to position your bins for maximum collection:

Think about the user journey and where cups are likely to be thrown away. Cup recycling worked well in Leeds around the train station, where there were large numbers of people exiting the station in the morning who were carrying a cup.

Choose a location where the same people can see the same messages again and again, meaning they become more likely to recycle. (e.g. commuters who use the same station each morning).

Pair cup recycling bins with a general waste bin (and ideally a recycling bin). This ensures people always have the option to put waste in the right place.

Make sure bins are visible from afar. This gives people more time to take in messaging before arriving at the bin, where they decide whether they will recycle their cup or not.

Make sure bins stand out and it’s really clear what they collect. People pay less attention when in a rush or in a crowded place. That’s why contamination rates generally get worse when footfall increases.

Remove any additional barrier to using recycling bins. People are less likely to recycle when they have to touch a dirty bin handle or have to go out of the way to recycle, for example.

Hubbub trials have found that the top performing on street bins are visible from afar, often on the edge of the pavement with bright colours and messaging helping them to standing out.

Promotional events

Will you be putting on an event to promote on-street cup recycling? Events need to be targeted at specific audiences such as local influencers or take place in places where food and drink is consumed e.g. community fairs.

Top Tip: Giveaways or competitions helped attract more people to talk to the event team. Make sure any giveaways don’t create more waste or litter. Have a look into items that are made out of coffee cups to help tell the story of the circular journey of coffee cups.

Keep in mind: Public engagement events can be time-consuming and resource intensive. Consider if this is the right approach to generate engagement with your project, as social media or a digital campaign could be just as or more effective.