The newly-established Paper Cup Recovery & Recycling Group (PCRRG) has appointed its chairperson and executive board members, as well as announcing two initial projects.

The group has been meeting regularly since November 2012, but under its formalisation, will now be run by an executive board of elected members.

This morning (31 November), the group announced that the board will comprise:

• Neil Whittall, Commercial and Contracts Director at disposable packaging manufacturers Huhtamaki;
• Adrian Pratt, Marketing Manager at paper cup manufacturers Benders Paper Cups;
• Oliver Rosevear, Energy and Environment Manager for café chain Costa Coffee;
• Matt Spencer, Commercial Director at café chain Caffè Nero;
• and Bradley Smith, Sales & Marketing Director at Grundon Waste Management.

Whittall will also serve as chairperson of the board.

PCRRG work details

Stakeholders of the paper cup and retail supply chain announced the launch of the formalised PCRRG, managed and coordinated by LRS Consultancy, in July of this year.

With 14 founding members – including Grundon Waste Management, paper recycling company James Cropper PLC, Caffè Nero, Nestlé Professional, and Mars Drinks – PCRRG’s primary aim is to ‘continue to drive action around the development of the collection and recycling opportunities for paper cups’ by identifying and supporting ‘solutions to sustainably transform used paper cups into a valuable resource’.

The board has now announced that it will focus initial efforts on two key parts of the paper cup supply chain: one working group will consider how consumers recycle their paper cups, initially within a specific location, and will test what influences their behaviour; while another working group will focus on the logistical, technical and economic viability associated with sorting and reprocessing used paper cups to ‘obtain materials of an appropriate quality that can be reused in the paper supply chain’.

The working groups will begin undertaking controlled trials over the next three to six months.

Speaking after the announcement this morning, Whittall (who will be leading the ‘upstream’ behaviour project), said: “I am really looking forward to working with fellow members to effectively target and understand consumers’ behaviour at each touch point and how we can affect their actions to capture enough of the right materials, with low levels of contamination.”

Pratt, who will lead the ‘downstream’ reprocessing project, also commented, saying: “It’s exciting to get a cross-sector team together to undertake a trial to understand the economic viability of transporting and reprocessing collected paper cups for use back in the paper supply chain.

“We hope to truly establish the probable mix of materials that reprocessors would be expected to handle and the likely outputs from the sorting stages, in order to assess the potential for the project to be viably scaled up.”

Find out more about the PCRRG.