Waste

Disposable hot drinks cups

No disposable hot drinks cups are recyclable using Dry Mixed Recycling bins (orange lid); they must be disposed in General Waste bins (grey lid).

Disposable hot drinks cups are available at all University catering establishments but customers without reusable cups will be charged 30p (on top of the hot drinks price).

Compostable hot drinks cups must not be placed in Food Waste bins (green lid). Compostable packing is required to be processed using in-vessel composting but the University's general waste contractor is not able to utilise this technology due to the scale of food waste they are collecting across the city of Edinburgh. Instead they send all the University's food waste to anaerobic digestion, and compostable packaging cannot be treated in this way, and would be removed from the food waste stream (as a contaminant) and sent as refuse-derived fuel (as the University's general waste is).

Reusable?
No
Recyclable?
No 
Compostable?
No

Process

  1. All disposable hot drinks cups must be disposed in General Waste bins (grey lid).