Queen Mary is phasing out single-use items, starting with a trial in Queen Mary Café with reusable cups. These cups are available to take around the Department W building, where they can be left in collection points to be washed.
We have partnered with East London company Reuser to supply and wash reusable take away cups and lids for the beverages at the Queen Mary Café. This offer will be extended to food containers in the future to cover the whole catering offer.
The reusable items are to be placed in collection points in the café, staff room and Department W kitchens after use. These collection points will have clear signage to make them easy to identify.
The dirty items are then collected and taken off site by cargo bike to be washed in an industrial dishwasher with four cycles to ensure they are clean before they are returned to us.
This does rely on all customers placing their Reuser cups and lids in the correct collection points, so we ask for everyone’s diligence. Please make sure you don’t accidentally place them in waste bins.
As highlighted in Reuser’s story, the UK uses over 3.2 billion disposable coffee cups every year. Single-use coffee cups are only recyclable if they are collected separately because they are made from mixed materials and are contaminated by drink residue.
The Reuser cups and containers are a closed loop system that replaces single-use items. Each Reuser cup is expected to have 1000 uses.
If the trial is successful, we plan on expanding the scheme to other outlets across the campuses.