No one can dispute the benfits of recycling; the conservation of natural resources is a key issue facing many countries in Western Europe (and further afield). That said, the detailed arguements surrounding recycling, energy use and carbon emission reduction are complex and require detailed Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to provide anythng approaching a comprehensive understanding of the pros and cons of recycling.

Recycling does reduce the reliance on landfill as a means of disposal, as well as potentially saving energy and resources.

The Paper Cup Recovery & Recycling Group has based an overall strategy on the 'Hierarchy of Waste' and has sought to identify options moving even closer to the 'top of the recycling ladder'. Cups continue to be required for beverage provision away from home, though we do not recommend repeated use of a paper cup for hygenic reasons.

Many organisations refer to 'collections' or 'recovery rate' as a measure of the degree to which they are meeting recycling commitments, although we would suggest that any recovery operation must be linked with an appropriate recycling operation and it is in this latter area we have focussed our attention.

Each paper recycling mill has its own strengths and areas where equipment improvements would be welcomed. For this primary reason a single approach to recovering paper cups may limit the paper reycling mills to which the recovered cups can be sent to be processed. The base paper or board from which the cup is formed before the polyethylene (PE) layer is added, is fairly easily recycled. As the cup moves down the finishing process, and the polyethylene layer is applied, the cup then becomes harder to recycle as the recycling mill must remove remove the PE layer from the cup before the good fibre can be used. When the paper cup then moves into the consumer arena and the lid, stir stick, napkin and coffee and muffin remains are added to the mix, it becomes increasingly challenging to separate out these materials to gain back the good useable fibre. In the context of a paper recycling mill, anything that is not good useable fibre is viewed as a contaminant.

The more complex the recycling mill, the more contaminants the mill can process out and recover the maximum amount of good useable fibre. However, each processing stage comes with a cost in terms of capital equipment, energy, maintenance and operational costs. One of the objectives of the Paper Cup Recovery & Recycling Group is to help draft an easy to use strategy that allows the consumer to conveniently and easily separate out the maximum amount of contaminants from the used paper cup thereby allowing the less sophisticated recycle mills to be able to use this excellent fibre source.

For the interest of the reader, some of the major unit operations involved in paper recycling are shown below. This is not meant to endorse any particular process or product but simply to be illustrative.