New initiative sees 65 coffee shops offering recycling facilities for single-use cups.
Environmental charity Keep Scotland Beautiful has joined forces with Glasgow City Council and local retailers to make it easier for people to recycle single-use coffee cups.
A new campaign, #TakeItBack, sees 65 coffee shops in the city centre offer recycling facilities for the cups, which are not accepted in Glasgow’s blue recycling bins.
Coffee drinkers are now encouraged to take their empty cups to Costa, McDonalds, Pret A Manger or Starbucks branches in the city to prevent the cups going to landfill.
It comes after research showed 70% of the city’s coffee drinkers wanted to recycle their cups, but only 12% were able to do so properly.
Paul Wallace, Keep Scotland Beautiful’s campaigns and social innovation manager, said: “Everyone needs to play their part if we are to reduce the nearly 500 million cups that end up in landfill or as litter each year. #TakeItBack is a perfect example of this, bringing together the council, retailers and the public to create change.
“Glaswegians told us that they wanted to recycle their cups and this is our response. Ultimately, this initiative is providing the opportunity for everyone to make a small yet impactful choice by recycling their single-use cup.
“Initial data from Pret indicates that they are recycling an average of 15,000 cups per month across their five participating stores. We hope that by raising awareness of the in-house cup recycling facilities available, we will see more and more people holding on to their cups to ensure that they get recycled.”
The council, a founder member of recycling campaign Cup Movement, is supporting the initiative through new signage on its public recycling bins.
Anna Richardson, city convener for sustainability and carbon reduction, said: “Cup Movement in Glasgow is about reducing the consumption of single-use cups, promoting reusable alternatives and making single-use cups easier to recycle.
“I hope that people will stop to think when they are throwing away their single use cup, pay attention to the new labelling and #TakeItBack.”
