Simply Cups Does Reading Festival

Bales of cups

Simply Cups, the UK’s first and only dedicated paper cup recycling scheme, recently collected the paper cups from Reading Festival 2017, the number one music festival in the UK.

As you can imagine a lot of waste including paper cups is created over the festival weekend. As an incentive to return cups and bottles, each of which carries a monetary value when returned to the dedicated return point.

The paper cups collected by Simply Cups were collected and taken to Simply Waste Solutions’ West London Depot where they’ve been sorted and bailed. From there they’re taken to a reprocessing plant where the cups are broken down and will be turned into a functional product.

The products made from recycled cups include; small office items such as pens and pencils to larger items like planters and picnic benches .
Simply Waste and Simply Cups are dedicated to recycling and sending zero waste to landfill.

The problem with paper cups is an ongoing one, Greenpeace today suggested that the Welsh government implement a tax on paper cups and problem plastics. With the hope of reducing the number of cups used daily.

Paper cups in west london depot before baling
Paper cups in west london depot before baling

Simply Cups came into existence to address the UK’s fastest-growing waste stream: the estimated 2.5 billion paper drinking cups disposed of each year. These cups contain an inner polyethylene layer, needed to keep the liquid in the cup and stop the rest of the material getting soggy, which in the past, paper processing plants were unable to separate, consequently the only solution was to send them to landfill or waste to energy.

The whole recycling landscape changed in 2013 when two new specialist plants were established. For the first time, these reprocessing facilities could now accept bulk quantities of cups and separate the plastic film from the paper, thereby allowing material recovery and recycling into new paper products.