UK. London Heathrow Airport is planning to significantly reduce and recycle single-use coffee cups collected from over 20 retail and lounge business partners.
The airport also announced a longer-term vision to phase out single-use plastics altogether.
A successful trial of a reusable coffee cup system and a ban on single-use coffee cups at Heathrow’s head office this Spring will influence airport initiatives, Heathrow said.
The airport noted that the UK uses 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups a year, but it is estimated that only 0.25% are recycled. Heathrow’s 78 million annual passengers use over 13.5 million disposable coffee cups; approximately 0.5% of all those used in the UK. Recycling this amount could therefore see the number of recycled cups in the UK increase by +200%.
“With passenger numbers continuing to rise, the need to tackle harmful single-use plastic across terminals cannot be ignored,” the airport said. “Heathrow has set a target to standardise and recycle all single-use coffee cups by the end of 2018 and continue efforts to completely rid staff areas of these cups.”
Dedicated coffee cup collection points will be rolled out across all terminals in coming weeks.
Retailers across the airport currently offer varying types of coffee cups, making it more difficult to sort and reprocess than other materials. Heathrow said it was working with its retail partners to simplify the switch to a single recyclable cup which will be collected by the airport’s waste supplier, Grundon. Batches of recyclable cups will then be transferred in consolidated loads to national waste collectors for recycling.
Passengers will be encouraged and incentivised to bring and use personal reusable cups.
Heathrow is also looking at other ways to reduce consumption of single-use plastic products, such as bottles, stirrers and straws. It is working with retail partners to ensure reusable crockery is available for all sit-in restaurant customers.
“As a small city, we are committed to reducing our impact on the environment and using all our influence to ensure individual companies working within our boundaries do so as well,” explained Heathrow Airport Chief Executive John Holland-Kaye.
“This announcement takes us one step further, ensuring all single-use coffee cups at the airport are able to be recycled with additional support from Heathrow.
“For businesses, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee – join us in banning single-use coffee cups in your office today so that we can make a difference to tomorrow.”
The Sustainable Restaurant Association Founder and Director Simon Heppner added: “Our work with Heathrow and its food & beverage partners over the last few years has helped lay the foundations for a more collaborative approach to tackling the sustainability challenges we face.
“Today’s commitment to reduce and recycle single-use coffee cups builds on this collaboration and is a welcome interim step forward. We look forward to continuing to work with the airport and its partners to achieve this and to ensure focus is maintained on the bigger goals – not only today’s more ambitious commitment to phase out single-use cups entirely but also to take a critical look at all disposable products.”
UK Aviation Minister Baroness Sugg commented: “I’m delighted to see Heathrow taking action to introduce recyclable coffee cups. Through our aviation strategy we’ll be working with industry to reduce the use of single-use plastics at airports and in the air so we can leave our planet in a better state than which we found it.
“Steps could include encouraging the wider installation of water fountains in airports to enable passengers to refill their bottles once they have passed through security.”