Cup Cycling
An innovative way to create paper from discarded paper cups.
In the UK 2.5 billion paper cups are discarded every year. The polyethylene coating of the cups means that they are only recyclable through specialist facilities.
Britain’s Master Papermakers James Cropper have found a way to remove the plastic from the inside of paper cups.
Their unique recycling plant has the capacity to recycle 500 million coffee cups every year. 95% of the cup waste is converted back in to paper and is available in a range of shades called Extract from G.F Smith.
More and more brands are signing up to the idea and sending used paper cups to the mill to be recycled. Here we can see bales from McDonalds, Café Nero and Costa amongst others ready to be processed.
We thrilled to be invited on a tour of the mill to see Extract papers being made.
