Nowadays, a wide range of demands is made of the once-humble vending cup. For today it needs to provide good product presentation, through high quality printing; comfort of handling for the consumer (no more of those ‘too hot to handle' experiences); durability; it has to be comparable to the cups provided by the ubiquitous high street coffee shops; it needs to stack well, work successfully in vending machines and come in a range of sizes; it should be recyclable; and, oh yes, it must be cheap as chips!

For the most part, gone are the bad old days of the thin, wobbly plastic cups, which could so easily spill their contents over the hands of the customer - which were probably already nearly burned by the transferred heat!

To their great credit, the cup makers have really turned the vending cup around in the past few years, and today's examples mostly achieve all the above criteria with flying colours - though, no doubt, some operators would argue about the ‘cheap as chips' part.

A great step forward was the introduction of the paper cup, which was introduced into vending partly (but not wholly) on the back of take-away coffee service in the high street.

A great discussion point today is the collection recycling of cups of used. The UK vending industry was, in fact, probably the first in the world to attempt to tackle this problem seriously, back in the early ‘90s, when it established its ‘own', not-for-profit, recycling company for plastic vending cups, Save A Cup. This severely financially restricted company did a first class job in hacking its way though a jungle of learning curves and resistance, and has emerged in a busy, efficient and profitable business - to the credit of the UK vending industry. This month sees Save a Cup's annual ‘Presentation to the Trade', a report on which will appear in the March issue of this magazine.

Today virtually every type of vending cup can be recycled. For example, formed in 2007 with the objective of identifying ongoing sustainable routes for the recovery and subsequent recycling of paper cups and similar products, The Paper Cup Recovery & Recycling Group is now talking about significant progress in recycling trials with paper mills.

Options have been studied for recovering and recycling paper cups in line with current government guidelines, including The Waste Hierarchy. The group encourages the development of a national collection strategy that allows all types of paper drinking cups to be recovered from site and to overcome the technical issues associated with various types of recycling, especially at paper mills around the UK, where the recovered cups could be recycled into products such as paper, tissue and packaging materials.

Trials are under way with several UK paper mills; initial tests having worked through unused, formed material before moving to post-consumer cups. Trials to date have helped to establish the logistic requirements and preparatory treatment needed in order for the recovered cups to be efficiently processed, including having the polyethylene coating (used to line the cup) removed, and the resultant fibre recycled.

During the trial process the group identified that, in order to maximise the recycling potential of this high quality fibre, post-consumer contamination (that is the inclusion of residual food stuff and other waste, such as foil wrappers and stirrers, with the paper cups) must is minimised.

The group, working with UK paper mills and waste management companies, including Save a Cup, identified that a contamination of around 10 per cent (by weight) is the maximum that is reasonably acceptable.

In some recovery trials initial contamination levels have been as high as 25 per cent (by weight). High levels of contamination can lead to rapid deterioration in the fibre quality contained in paper cups, resulting in material rejection and, as a consequence, alternative disposal routes that are less desirable than recycling - at best energy from waste recovery or, worse, landfill.

The Paper Cup Recovery and Recycling Group insists that it is extremely important to educate the consumer to separate as much liquid and other waste from the cups at the point of collection. As consumers become more accustomed to segregating waste the situation can only improve; indeed with education and clear instructions trial sites have been able to minimise contamination levels to an acceptable level.

It is recognised that paper cups, in general, need to be handled in a responsible and sustainable way, rather than going to landfill. Energy Recovery (also known as Energy from Waste or EfW) has been chosen as an interim solution and may continue to be used in certain circumstances.

Save a Cup has set up its own paper cup recovery scheme to handle cups in this way, its collections, where appropriate, being utilised for paper mill post consumer trials.

The Paper Cup Recovery and Recycling Group currently consists of members from the vending and hospitality industries, consisting of representatives from paper cup manufacturers, board manufacturers, beverage suppliers, Save a Cup plus vending and catering operators.