Why recycled coffee cups are making a splash in home design

Forget that nasty guilty feeling when ordering your next coffee to go – new advances in technology save disposable coffee cups from landfill and turn them into items of lasting beauty for the home

Recycled coffee cups are spilling into residential building and infrastructure projects, with a range of innovative new products available to consumers, property developers, councils and state governments.

 Lightweight concrete products for the home, made using takeaway coffee waste, include bases under hot water services, heating and cooling units, split system airconditioning units, pumps and tanks.

Closed Loop recycled coffee cups are used in saveBOARD sustainable building products including interior feature walls in striking custom colours. Picture: supplied

 Closed Loop Environmental Solution’s Simply Cups program has saved more than 30 million paper cups from Australian landfill since launching in 2017, says managing director Rob Pascoe.

 “We have multiple (residential) avenues for the recycled cups, including lightweight concrete products and construction boards,” he says.

 Closed Loop supplies cups used to manufacture domestic garden beds that are made from 100 per cent recycled plastic and paper cups. And in a neat twist, the company’s rCup collaboration is the world’s first reusable coffee cup made from disposables.

Closed Loop recycled coffee cups are used in consumer retail products including the rCUP, the world's first reusable coffee cup made from disposables. Picture: supplied

 Simply Cups also supplies coffee cups to make saveBOARD, a sustainable, highly versatile building material made from household waste that includes long-life cartons and soft plastics in the mix.

This low-carbon building material has no additives – no glues, chemicals or adhesives – and creates no manufacturing waste; all offcuts are reused.

 Nationwide, more than 630 7-Eleven stores have cup collection units and numerous more can be found at the coffee consumption source: shopping centres, offices, schools and universities.

Closed Loop recycled coffee cups used in saveBOARD have a second life in beautiful building materials for the home, including kitchen benches in custom colours. Picture: supplied

 And in an Australian first, the recycled coffee cups have also just been used to construct a suburban road.

 Fibres in the cups deliver an additive that helps to create a superior, more durable product called PAK-PAVE that is being touted as quieter and safer than regular asphalt.

 Two pilot projects in Western Sydney will use more than 135,000 recycled paper cups including coffee cups, which made up 85 per cent of all paper cups collected for recycling in the participating local government area (LGA) in 2022.

Australia's first suburban road made using recycled coffee cups. Picture: supplied

From beans to benefits

• The consumer concrete products are nearly half the weight of standard concrete slabs, making handling and installation easier and safer.

• Long-life milk cartons, soft plastics and paper cups have traditionally been difficult materials to recycle and were destined for landfill.

• Improved technology is creating sustainable, high performing alternatives to plasterboard and other uses. Applications for saveBOARD include using exposed internal board as a kitchen benchtop or feature interior wall in custom colours.

• Cup collection locations can be found at simplycups.com.au/locations or on the free RecycleMate app.

Originally published as Why recycled coffee cups are making a splash in home design