Nottingham shopping centre has launched a new coffee cup recycling scheme

Nottingham Giltbrook Retail Park has launched on Saturday (November 30) a paper cup recycling scheme with the hopes to recycle 165,000 coffee cups per year. 

Giltbrook is one of twelve winners to receive The Cup Fund grant which is funded by the Starbucks 5p cup charge and is being delivered by the charity Hubbub to various sites across the UK.

Giltbrook Park has so far used the funding to install ten coffee cup recycling bins at strategic points across the park.

All cups that are collected will then be recycled within the UK into new products, the new products will be manufactured locally to reduce transportation, they have said they expect to recycle over 165,000 cups each year.

Catherine Furlong, centre manager at Giltbrook said: ‘We’ll be setting up a new waste stream that allows us to efficiently separate coffee cups and send them off for recycling.’

‘We will also be introducing new recycling bins across the shopping park so that our shoppers can recycle their waste while visiting us.’

‘We’re looking forward to getting these two new initiatives going and improving our recycling even further.’

Gavin Ellis, co-founder and director of Hubbub said: ‘Giltbrook has already demonstrated an impressive commitment to sustainability and we’re delighted to work with them to make the introduction of paper cup recycling a success.’

‘We know from our work on similar initiatives in other locations around the UK that the public are keen to do the right thing when it comes to recycling and the response to cup recycling in other locations has been very positive.’

‘This is the first retail park to introduce these facilities and I’m sure that shoppers and those who work at Giltbrook will embrace the opportunity to recycle their cups.’

A spokesperson for Starbucks has commented: ‘Addressing the issue of waste in our stores is a global priority, and we are tackling this from a number of angles within our organisation, whether t’s reducing the amount of single-use materials we introduce to begin with, encouraging customers to adopt reusables or investing in an alternative cup solution that could transform the industry.’

‘Recognising the sector-wide issue, we are committed to supporting local councils and communities to develop out-of-store paper cup recycling infrastructures, increase the ease and availability of recycling for our customers.’

Photo Credit – Pixabay