Cup recycling – recycling 100%
of your paper cups couldn’t be easier

Many different types of businesses and organisations use disposable paper cups, including offices, coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, conference venues, entertainment/leisure venues, stadiums and sports venues, health and leisure centres, shopping centres, airports, train stations, hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, manufacturing facilities and many more.

Grundon’s cup recycling service is ideal for all working environments where paper cups are used, as the frequency of your collections can be tailored to quantities that you generate.

By using our paper cup recycling service you can ensure that your waste paper cups are being 100% recycled and being given new life as new products and materials.

There is even the option to purchase recycled paper products that have been made from your waste paper cups – it truly is the circular economy in motion!

At present, disposable paper cups are placed into your general waste bin. This means that they are either destined for disposal at landfill or incinerated at an Energy from Waste facility, whereby energy is recovered as they are burnt. Only a small amount, less than 1%, are recycled with the paper fibres being recovered.

Nearly all existing recycling facilities do not currently have the specialist technology to sort and recycle the paper cups with other paper and card waste streams.

Paper cups are problematic to recycle, due to the fact that they are made of two materials – paper and the polyethylene film which is bonded to it. The bonding between these two materials makes it difficult to separate the paper fibres from the polyethylene film.

It is the use of these two materials that makes the cups both waterproof and enables them to retain their shape and structural integrity when filled with liquids.

Only a select few specialist recycling facilities have the technology to accept paper cups for recycling.

We can provide you with specially designed paper cup recycling bins to help segregate them from your other waste streams. Suitable for internal use, these easy to empty and clean bins are designed to collect and stack the used paper cups. They feature an integral, removable 7.5 litre central reservoir were excess liquid should be poured prior to disposing of the empty cups.

The bins also feature a specially design side pod for the disposal of lids, stirrers, tea bags, etc.

There is also the option to include a signage kit with each bin, meaning that it’s easy to educate your employees as to how waste paper cups should be correctly disposed of, ready for recycling.

We will provide you with bespoke certified CarbonNeutral® waste sacks* to line your bin, making it easy to empty and keep clean.

Grundon can also provide you with external cup recycling bins, where you can store your waste paper cups until your next scheduled collection. Depending on the quantities of waste paper cups you are producing and the frequency of your scheduled collections we have a range of bin sizes to suit your business, including 240 litre wheeled bins, and 660 litre and 1100 litre drop-fronted wheeled containers.

* These sacks made are using sugarcane polymers that are created from the waste product of sugarcane extraction. The CarbonNeutral® aspect of our cup recycling sacks comes from the natural process of photosynthesis during the growth of the sugarcane. At this stage carbon is actively captured, which means the polymer is initially carbon positive. The amount of captured carbon is almost equivalent to the amount of carbon expended when using oil-based polymers.

The fact that sugarcane is a renewable resource also means it doesn’t deplete valuable fossil fuels, unlike its oil-based counterparts. The production process inevitably generates carbon through factors such as transport and electricity use, which means that by the time the bio-based polythene is produced it is actually carbon neutral as opposed to carbon negative. They are is also 100% recyclable.

We can collect and recycle most types of paper cups. However, please find below a full specification of the types of cups accepted:

• We can recycle most polyethylene (PE) coated cups, including double-walled hot cups which are coated inside only (such as coffee cups used by high street chains such as Costa and Starbucks) and cold cups which are coated both inside and out (such as those used by McDonalds for serving soft drinks and milkshakes).
• We can recycle cups that are made of bleached fibres only. Unfortunately, we cannot recycle cups made with unbleached fibres.
• We can recycle most paper cups manufactured by Seda, Huhtamaki, Benders, Dart and IP.

We will collect your waste paper cups for recycling as per the pre-agreed schedule. This will be based on the quantities of cups you use. The service operates on a minimum fortnightly collection, through to daily collections for customers producing larger quantities of cups.

All collections will be made using our specialist fleet of certified CarbonNeutral® collection vehicles and delivered to a Grundon facility where they will be processed and prepared to be sent for specialist recycling.

This means that every time we come to your site to make a collection we will not impact on your company’s carbon footprint.

Once you have segregated your waste paper cups, ensuring that all excess liquids have been drained and any other contaminants such as lids, stirrers, tea bags, etc, have been removed, we will take the ‘clean’ waste paper cups back to one of our Materials Recovery Facilities where they will be processed and baled. This ensures that the material is of the highest quality before being sent onwards to our partner, industry-specialist CupCyclingTM by James Cropper for recycling.

James Cropper will then process the waste paper cups, recycling 100% of the materials, leaving zero waste. Approximately 90% of the material will be paper, which will be converted back into Forest Stewardship Council (FCS) certified paper fibre. The remaining 10% is made up of the plastic polymers from the polyethylene film and will be sent for reprocessing into insulation for electrical cabling.

Yes, as a Grundon cup recycling service customer you can really enhance your environmental credentials further by having the opportunity to purchase paper products made from your waste paper cups.

Once recycled, your waste paper cups are given a new life as a variety of paper products. For example, a sheet of 380gsm paper is made of five paper cups.

By using our cup recycling service you can order paper products for your business, such as 100% recycled 80gsm office paper.

Made using recycled paper cups, these products offer you a complete closed-loop system that helps to make your business greener, further enhancing your brand.

We can help you with educating and engaging with your employees about the correct segregation and recycling of paper cups.

At Grundon, we don’t believe that a one-size-fits-all approach works best when promoting a new recycling scheme. Our expert team will devise a bespoke communications programme that fits with your business, helping to provide clear communications about the benefits of your new paper cup recycling programme.

In doing this we can help by providing clear signage for all bins, showing how to correctly recycle your waste paper cups. We can also produce posters and host waste awareness days at your sites to promote the benefits of the programme.