Coffee cups should not be put in your household recycling bin. The best way to reduce disposable coffee cup waste is to use a reusable cup or crockery.
Use the directory below to find recycling drop-off points for coffee cups (and other kinds of paper cups), which are located around Australia.
Coffee Cups
Coffee cups should not be put in your recycling bin at home or work. They can, however, be taken to a designated recycling point.
Simply Cups has partnered with 7-Eleven and various shopping centres, schools, and community groups to provide the public with more than 1,500 recycling drop-off locations for disposable coffee cups, including compostable cups. Use the directory on this page to find a location near you.
Simply Cups also accepts other paper cups including takeaway soft drink cups, milkshake cups, Slurpee cups, compostable cups and plant-based paper cups. Coffee cup lids and drinking straws are only accepted at participating 7-Eleven stores.
Australians use 1.8 billion single-use, hot beverage cups every year, with many being littered. When they are sent to landfill, the cardboard fibre of the cup releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Recycling coffee cups:
Simply Cups recycles used coffee cups into a new raw material that can be used to make asphalt, light-weight concrete and low-carbon building materials.
Recycling is a great way to prevent waste from going to landfill but reducing the number of disposable cups you use will have an even better environmental impact. Australians can reduce their coffee cup waste by using a reusable coffee cup or simply drinking the coffee from crockery.
You can also choose to buy coffee from cafes that are making an effort to reduce their environmental impact by searching Responsible Cafes. The cafes are given ratings based on their positive environmental actions such as composting coffee grounds and using ethically sourced coffee beans.
