Coffee Waste Recycling
Did you know that both coffee cups and coffee grounds can now be recycled?
With all eyes on the amount of waste that find its way into the oceans and damages the environment, coffee consumption and its by-products are high on the agenda.
Firstly, disposable coffee cups aren’t so disposable. They are lined with plastic meaning they can’t be recycled in a conventional way. Instead, they need to be transported to one of only three specialist facilities in the UK, meaning that fewer than 1% of coffee cups are ever recycled. Secondly, around 250,000 tonnes of wet, spent coffee grounds are produced in the UK each year, which, when disposed in landfill, break down to produce greenhouse gas emissions including methane, which is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The good news is that Cawleys now offer a service that allows you to recycle both your business’s coffee grounds and disposable cups. By putting both your coffee cups and grounds to work, your organisation could reduce its carbon footprint and save money in the process.
Coffee cups
At Cawleys we encourage business to recycle as many disposable coffee cups as possible. To do this the cups need to be segregated at the point of disposal. Our Infinity recycling programme allows employees in your business to dispose of any dregs and store the used coffee cups in one central unit. We then collect the coffee cups and work with specialist coffee cup recyclers who re-use the durable fibres used to construct the cups to create industrial strength materials.
Effective segregation of coffee cups at the point of disposal not only benefits the environment, it also provides commercial benefits to your business. Coffee cups are bulky and cumbersome and if discarded with your usual black bag waste will contribute your general waste costs. By diverting them from general waste and mixed recycling you can save money on waste collection and reduce the risk of contaminating other recyclable materials
Coffee grounds
In the UK we consume around 95 million cups of coffee each day producing around 250,000 tonnes of used coffee grounds each year. Unfortunately, much of this waste ends up in landfill but at Cawleys we are committed to helping as many companies as possible recycle their coffee grounds into a product with a useful second life.
Cawleys collaborates with Envar Composting to enable the recycling of coffee grounds. We do this by enabling our customers to segregate coffee grounds from general waste at the point of disposal.
As part of our Infinity scheme, we provide useful coffee cadies to store coffee grounds for collection. Once collected by us, we deliver the grounds to Envar Composting, who initiate a thorough cleaning process. Envar meticulously cleans the coffee grounds, ensuring that only the purest grounds move forward in the production cycle.
From this point, Envar collaborates with trusted partners who specialise in transforming waste coffee grounds into innovative, sustainable end products.
By choosing to segregate coffee grounds your company could make substantial savings on waste management costs. Coffee grounds are wet and heavy and will add significantly to the weight of your general waste. Opting to divert heavy wet coffee grounds from general waste bins will save you money on waste collection costs whilst reducing the risk of contaminating your dry mixed recycling.
Speak to Cawleys about how your business could save money and help the environment by recycling coffee cups and grounds today.
