No Disposable Cup Day

Daily in the UK we use more than 7 million disposable cups and over half a million are just dropped on the floor. To help raise awareness of the issue, Friday 4^th October is No Disposable Cup Day.

The day has two aims:

1. For the UK to stop using disposable cups for one day on 4^th
2. Ultimately, we as a nation stop using disposable cups completely.

Around half the coffee we drink in the UK is served in a disposable cup. In fact, the UK is one of the worst in the world for disposable cup waste, we throw away 2.5 billion cups a year – this would create a pile of disposable cup waste as big as the Albert Hall in London.

For the 2019/20 academic year, Host purchased over 8,000 reusable coffee cups for students living with us. The cups were handed our to our new students, when they moved into their Student Accommodation, we hope by giving nearly every student living with us a reusable cup we can make some dent in the 7 million cups used each year! The cups will also save our students money as many retailers now offer a discount off the cost of your cup of coffee when you use a reusable mug.

Where can your Host reusable cup get a discount?

Plus! Many local or independent coffee shops will offer you a discount for using your Host cup, so the next time you need your coffee fix, remember to take and use your cup!

Disposable Cup facts:

• The UK throws away 2.5 billion disposable cups every year.
• Less than 1% of disposable cups are recycled – There are currently only a small number of specialist plants in the UK able to process the disposable cups, and as a result, the vast majority of them (more than 99.75%) don’t get recycled.
• Half a million disposable cups are littered every day.
• Packaging producers only pay for 10% of the cost of packaging disposal and recycling.
• Disposable cups contain 5% polyurethane plastic, making composting and recycling of disposable cups extremely rare.
• Half a trillion disposable cups are manufactured annually around the world; that’s over 70 disposable cups for every person on the planet.
• 5 million trees are cut down each year, using 4 billion gallons of water to manufacture disposable cups.
• Very little recycled paper is used to make disposable cups due to health risk concerns.
• 70% of the world’s paper comes from diminishing forests, not from plantations or recycling.
• The manufacturing process uses enough energy to power 54,000 homes.

Unlike many environmental problems, this one is not hard to fix – it can be fixed overnight – by saying no and taking a reusable cup with you.