McDonald's and SSP Group are among the first companies to sign up to the Cup Collective | Photo credit: Erik McLean

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Coffee cup recycling initiative, the Cup Collective, has named McDonald’s, SSP Group, C2 Centre, and the National Railway Company of Belgium (SNCB) as the scheme’s first partners.
 
Launched in September 2022 by Finnish paper and packaging manufacturers Stora Enso and Huhtamaki, Cup Collective aims to recycle half a billion coffee cups within two years.
 
The companies have now begun placing paper cup collection bins at public venues and travel hubs in Brussels, Belgium, as part of an initial launch in the Benelux region before a planned wider European rollout.
 
Collected cups are recycled in facilities in the region, including Stora Enso’s site in Langerbrugge, Belgium. 
 
“It is time to make paper cup recycling an easy, everyday activity. We are now able to provide a platform to collect and capture the value of paper cups at an industrial scale and are calling businesses to get on board and become part of the Cup Collective programme,” said Peter Goodwin, Managing Director and Co-Founder of co-cre8, the firm managing the Cup Collective programme.
 
Solutions for tackling disposable cup waste are gaining traction among food and beverage brands as consumer awareness over single-use waste in intensifies.
 
In March 2022, Starbucks said it wanted to create a ‘cultural movement’ towards reusable coffee cup usage at its stores around the world and has introduced cup share schemes across Europe, North America, and Taiwan.
 
Europe’s largest coffee chain, Costa Coffee, provides paper cup recycling points at most of its 2,800 UK stores. In July 2022 the coffee chain partnered with McDonald’s to introduce recycling bins at 30 Roadchef motorway service stations.
 
Meanwhile, proposed legislation in the Republic of Ireland would make it the first nation in the world to introduce a mandatory €0.20 levy on all disposable cups served out-of-home.