LondonEnergy offers Camden Council a coffee cup recycling solution

Today saw the launch of LondonEnergy’s #MochaDifference campaign in Camden Council’s St Pancras offices, home to 4000 staff and visitors.

Camden joins fellow North London boroughs, Waltham Forest and Hackney, in the quest to reduce the modern-day scourge of disposable coffee cups, so prevalent in our lives and yet so problematic to recycle.

LondonEnergy will now provide a free, weekly collection of single-use coffee cups from the Kings Cross location under a scheme which allows staff to separate their disposable coffee cups at the kitchen recycling point.

The cups are then placed into clear sacks by the in-house cleaning teams and transferred daily to a storage room, ready to be collected by LondonEnergy on the allotted day. In a bid to support the eradication of single-use cups altogether, LondonEnergy also handed out 200 reusable cups to council staff.  Numerous, well known coffee chains now offer discounts of between and 20p and 50p to customers using their own cups. Disposable coffee cups have a complex range of plastic and paper content, and the information about what type to recycle and where, can be confusing.  By separating and recycling disposable coffee cups, Camden hopes to improve the material quality of the mixed recycling.

The council is aiming to raise the overall rate for mixed and recycling to an ambitious 40%. This educational and informative scheme will also raise awareness of what can and cannot be recycled and encourage staff and visitors to understand how single-use, disposable recycling can be reduced through their owns actions and smart choices. Deanna Donaldson, Head of Engagement at LondonEnergy, comments: “We have seen fantastic results from the #MochaDifference campaign we launched firstly in Waltham Forest and then Hackney and have equally high expectations from Camden Council’s adoption of the scheme.

Following the publication of the Mayor’s Environment Strategy in May 2018, London boroughs across the board are seeking to raise recycling rates and reduce food waste from their residents.  It’s imperative therefore that we in the industry practise what we preach and set a gold standard in the adoption of reusable items.”