Starting in December, Oxford City Council will be installing on-street coffee cup recycling bins in the city centre, Summertown and Headington.
The scheme has been made possible by a grant from Hubbub, one of the UK’s most prominent waste reduction charities. This year Hubbub partnered with Starbucks to launch The Cup Fund, a new grant fund that aims to kickstart paper cup recycling across the UK. The fund will support twelve projects, one of which is in Oxford.
The City Council will install dedicated on-street coffee cup recycling bins in high footfall areas: the city centre, Summertown high street and Headington high street. The programme aims to recycle 6.35 tonnes of coffee cups, roughly equivalent to 650,000 paper cups, in the first year.
According to Maria Warner, Recycling and Waste Strategy Manager at Oxford Direct Services, single-use takeaway coffee cups make up over five per cent of the collected waste from the high streets of Headington, Summertown and Oxford city centre. That’s over 12 tonnes of coffee cups a year going into our general litter bins in these three areas alone.
Of the initiative, Councillor Tom Hayes said, “Oxford is proud to be introducing on-street coffee cup recycling, and we plan to make the most of this excellent opportunity by overhauling our high street litter bins so that people can recycle more of their waste on-the-go.”
