A SOUTH Lakeland papermill is likely to be a key player in helping a coffee chain giant achieve its eco aim of recycling half a billion takeaway cups a year by 2020.

Costa Coffee announced yesterday (April 18) that it will become the first ever coffee chain in the UK to commit to recycling the same volume of cups its puts onto the market in a bid to tackle the challenge of coffee cup recycling and to stop them ending up in landfill.

Takeaway coffee cups can be recycled but they must be collected correctly and sent to the right recycling plants.

James Cropper at Burneside, is one of just three paper mills in the UK that can recycle these cups, using ‘CupCycling’ to turn cups into papers that can be reused.

Commenting on the announcement, Phil Wild, James Cropper PLC CEO, said: “Seeing the high-quality material available in coffee cups go to waste on such a huge scale is what led us to develop our CupCycling™ technology. We established supply networks with coffee houses, waste management companies and brands to bring this waste stream back into value chains.

“By extracting the paper fibre from used coffee cups, not only can we make a wide range of paper products, but our latest innovation, COLOURFORM™ goes a step further by turning it into high quality plastic-free packaging too.

“Currently only a small proportion of the 2.5 billion cups we use in the UK each year are being recycled. That’s why this new scheme initiated by Costa is a really positive step in the journey to significantly increase these rates and help tackle a longstanding environmental concern.”

The other two paper mills that are able to recycle the cups are ACE UK near Halifax and DS Smith Recycling in Kent.

Yesterday’s announcement launches in partnership with five national waste collectors – Veolia, Biffa, Suez, Grundon and First Mile. All five of which will be paid a supplement of £70 by Costa for every tonne of cups collected.

Dominic Paul, managing director for Costa, said: “Costa is putting its money where its mouth is to find an immediate solution to increasing the volume of takeaway coffee cups being recycled in the UK. It also dispels the myth that coffee cups can’t be recycled!

“Following today’s announcement up to 100 million cups will be recycled this year alone and if the nation’s other coffee chains sign up, there is no reason why all takeaway cups could not be recycled by as early as 2020.”

Costa is looking to increase the use of reusable cups, while working with a number of designers and cup manufacturers, looking at how to minimalise and eventually eliminate plastic in takeaway cups.

It also offers a 25p discount to customers that use a reusable cup and announced that it will remove all plastic straws from its stores.

James Cropper’s paper mill was visited by Prince Charles last month, who was given the task of launching the COLOURFORM production unit, where he saw how the cups are turned into packaging.

And the paper maker recently picked up two prestigious awards for its eco initiatives, winning Best Collaborative Effort at the Sedex Awards, for the CupCycling scheme.

Sedex is one of the world’s largest collaborative platforms for sharing responsible sourcing data on supply chains. James Cropper also took home the Sustainability Award at this year’s Foodservice Packaging Association Awards that recognise responsible manufacturing, sourcing, usage and disposal of on the go food packaging.