Water cooler cup recycling

Tobster86

Not money saving per se, but I thought I might seek advice here.

My workplace doesn't recycle water fountain/coffee vending machine cups, and the level of waste is appalling. We're only ~30 employees and generate what looks like about 3 binliners-full a day.

I not by any means the sort of person that feels Gaia's seething rage burn through them whenever they see a Range Rover, but object to what is absolutely pointless waste on this scale.

Doubting the company would pay for this I did a quick Google to try to determine the practicalities of this; who could take them away, for how much, could someone in the company run them somewhere, etc. The information seems pretty sparse.

All I can think of is to ask the (separate) water cooler and coffee machine suppliers what they would charge to provide the recycling service, and get other employees on board to create pressure; although I think I cause enough contention there as it is and don't want to have a high profile over this.

Can anyone suggest anything? Who can/where to take them, etc?

jamesingram

what plastic are they made of ? If polypropene (PP) then may be recyclable. They will probably be made of recycled material.
check out http://www.bpf.co.uk/Plastipedia/default.aspx for info. on various plastic .
Start by asking the suppliers as you suggested.

Ben84

Recycling is one option, but it has issues. You'll need to collect all the cups together - rather than in all the bins throughout the building, then you'll need to ensure people don't put other rubbish in the cup bin (harder than it seems). You'll also probably need the cups to be fairly clean, which is not the state in which anyone who has had tea or coffee is likely to be throwing them away in. It also takes time and work to send them away or get them ready for collection.

For all the effort in sorting, cleaning and dispatching disposable cups, it seems to be far less bother to just have reusable ceramic cups?

Ectophile

Ben84 wrote: »

Recycling is one option, but it has issues. You'll need to collect all the cups together - rather than in all the bins throughout the building, then you'll need to ensure people don't put other rubbish in the cup bin (harder than it seems). You'll also probably need the cups to be fairly clean, which is not the state in which anyone who has had tea or coffee is likely to be throwing them away in. It also takes time and work to send them away or get them ready for collection.

For all the effort in sorting, cleaning and dispatching disposable cups, it seems to be far less bother to just have reusable ceramic cups?

Where I work, we have dedicated plastic cup bins. Each bin has 4 tubes down which the cups can be dropped, so that they automatically stack together. While I'm sure somebody could stuff rubbish down the tube, it's pretty obvious which are cup recycling bins and which are ordinary litter bins.

We aren't expected to rinse the cups. I assume the recyclers do that.

jimjames

The normal mantra is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Following the first part can you persuade people to stop using the plastic cups at all? We have water coolers and I have a glass on my desk that I go to fill up so don't actually need a cup. Even a small sign next to the machine may make people think about it when they didn't even consider it before.

melanzana

What's wrong with re using your cup?

We do this at my work all the time, BIG SIGN there!

Obviously can only be done for a while, but it's only your mouth on that cup you are re using!

If folk had to pay for a plastic cup, problem would be solved sharpish.

Ectophile

melanzana wrote: »

If folk had to pay for a plastic cup, problem would be solved sharpish.

Employers are required to provide free drinking water for their staff. If they got rid of disposable cups, then they would need to install water fountains, or issue everybody with a re-usable cup.