Recycling gets a caffeine boost: DS Smith joins coffee cup scheme

United Kingdom – Packaging leader DS Smith will be part of a new coffee cup recycling project, which will be launched at the start of the new year and is going to be run by the Paper Cup Recycling and Recovery Group.

As part of the research project, DS Smith will examine the feasibility of recycling used coffee at its Kemsley Paper Mill, in Sittingbourne. This hi-tech plant is currently the biggest recycling site for recovered fibres in the UK.

Coffee cups have presented ‘significant challenges’ because of the plastic lining inside the cups combined with food-waste contamination and coffee remnants, so DS Smith observes. That’s the reason the company is dedicated to offering sustainable solutions for the coffee-to-go sector.

‘DS Smith has already been actively involved with PCRRG members such as Costa, and on lab and pilot plant-scale recycling tests,’ comments Matthew Prosser, managing director at DS Smith Recycling UK. ‘I am pleased this work has developed to be able to undertake research on an industrial scale that will provide the whole supply cycle with data on the recyclability of paper cups in mainstream packaging mills,’ he adds.

DS Smith counts as one of Europe’s largest cardboard and paper recycler; operating in 12 countries across the continent and processing 5.2 million tonnes of materials every year.