DinnerwareDinnerware & Serving Pieces

Sorting Out the Coffee Cup Recycling Dilemma

It is estimated that 65% of the American population drinks coffee.  Of those coffee drinkers it is further estimated that 250 coffee cups per year are thrown away per person.  The grand total being 58 billion discarded coffee cups!  You could fill the largest football stadium in the world (Michigan Stadium) 50 times with that amount of coffee waste.

That’s a lot of paper coffee cups!  It is clear that if a solution isn’t found to divert coffee cup waste, the negative impact on the environment will be critical. 

Even as some recycling programs now include coffee cup recycling as a part of their program, the problem has been the need to separate the paper coffee cups from the plastic lids. If the lids are included with the cups, the coffee cups are unable to be recycled and end up in the landfill.

The only way to solve this problem is to create a means of separating the coffee cups from their lids at the source of collection. Luckily, there is a Coffee Cup Recycler which does that very thing. Forcing the coffee cup drinker to remove the lid from their coffee cup before dropping the cup into the slot is the first step in ensuring a clean sort of recycling coffee cups.

 The Coffee Cup Recycler from Busch Systems was unveiled at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s Exposition in Houston, TX recently to rave reviews. National Recycling Consultant Brandon Rutledge attended the show and stated “The SCAA Exposition attendees are very impressed with the Coffee Cup Recycler. It goes a long way to solving the coffee cup problem we face in our recycling efforts”.

 Even if your recycling program does not include paper cup recycling, you will want to separate coffee cups from your other recyclables. If paper coffee cups end up in your bottles & cans, these will be contaminated and thus unable to be recycled, ending up in a landfill.

Help out and do your part. If your recycling program allows you to recycle coffee cups, make sure they are separated from their lids and end up getting recycled. If your recycling program does not allow for coffee cups, at least ensure they do not end up tainting the rest of your recycling efforts. Either way, you win.

Let’s start separating those billions of coffee cups, one sip at a time.

..

About the Author

Chris McBrien is a writer focusing on recycling efforts and green initiatives and brings years of experience in the recycling container industry to his articles.

Concert for Coffee Cup – Dylan Rodrigue & Jamo Simmons