As part of a new campaign to reduce paper cup waste, sustainability charity, Hubbub, has placed 11 coffee cup shaped bins throughout Oxford Road in Manchester.
The bin cups, which will remain on the street until the end of the year, aims to collect 20,000 coffee cups.
Titled #1MoreShot, the project is using pioneering technology to ensure that the collected cups will be transformed into 15,000 flower pot holders for community gardens across greater Manchester.
Currently the UK throws away 7 million coffee cups a day, of which less than one per cent are recycled.
This means that 2.5 billion coffee cups are thrown away each year throughout the country.
Acting as a pilot project, Gavin Ellis, co-founder of Hubbub said that:
This new initiative will test an innovative new technology and discover whether the public will separate out their coffee cups if specialist bins are provide.
“If this is successful, it can be extended to other cities across the UK as a number of local authorities have already put their name forward.”
#1MoreShot is being run in partnership with Manchester City Council and a range of chain stores including Caffé Nero, Costa, Greggs, KFC, McDonald’s, Nestle, Pret a Manger and Waitrose.
The issue with disposable coffee cups is the fact that disposable coffee cups contain polythene linings in the interior of the cups that recycling centres currently cannot recycle or take a part from the main body of the cup.
Earlier in the year a campaign was led by chef and television personality Hugh Fernley-Whttingstall, which led major coffee cup chains to sign a manifesto to cut coffee cup waste.
