Recycling Coffee Cups - the #SquareMileChallenge

#SquareMileChallenge

The Square Mile Challenge is a new initiative to increase the recycling of disposable (or should we call them recyclable?!) coffee cups. The  scheme is running in the Square Mile in Central London. I first heard about this scheme with this instagram post by CIBSE YEN London.

The amount of paper/plastic cups we trow away is huge, 2.5b a year - yikes - thats a lot of lattes, cappuccinos and teas! Still, this is a good news story as the news is not that there is a problem, but that there is change for the better coming. This new scheme may be high profile and limited in geographic area, but if proven successful will be rolled out around the country. This is the first time a scheme of this nature has combined the major retailers, and your coffee cup from any coffee shop can be recycled in any of the stores bins when you are done with your cup.

You can find more information on the scheme at City of London's site here. The scheme is run by Hubbub and you can find more details on how the cups will be recycled on their site - the important thing is that we stop sending seven million cups a day into landfill, as we are at the moment.

Find the #SquareMileChallenge Bins - Map from Hubbub Foundation.

Return to Earth

Last weekend I went to the museum to see Tim Peake's landing craft. The Soyuz TMA-19M has pride of place at the Science Museum and was THE attraction that everyone wanted to see. It was great to be able to see such a recent artefact of space exploration, its only 7 months ago that we saw TV news clips of its landing, and for free too.

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