Dec
10
Sustainability news – the truth about plastic cups!
Posted at 16:02 in Customer News : Sustainability
When it comes to sustainability, Mars Drinks takes its commitment to the environment and its customers very seriously.
The Mars Drinks team is continuously reviewing the way we work and our own operations to be as environmentally friendly and sustainable as possible. Only last year we were able to announce that we were sending zero production waste to landfill from our UK factories. Considering we manufacture 3,700 drinks vending machines and 884 million drinks per year , that’s not bad!
But it doesn’t stop there. We also want to ensure that our drinks vending machines enable our customers to have a more sustainable workplace too.
As each year, millions of cups of hot drinks are delivered in disposable vending machine cups, this is an important area to review.
Recyclable plastic cups can be better for the environment than reusable ceramic cups. A number of scientific studies have shown that you would actually need to use a ceramic mug 1,006 times to use the equivalent energy as a plastic cup.
Just making a ceramic cup in a kiln uses a huge amount of energy and washing them up using detergents creates pollution as well as using more energy to heat the water, etc. Broken ceramic cups also can’t be recycled so go to landfill, whereas plastic cups can be recycled to make other plastic items. Mars Drinks was a founding member of the UK’s Save a Cup, which was created in 1992 to collect and recycle vending cup waste. Since the scheme started it has recycled over one billion cups including about 300 tonnes of KLIX cups!
So when it comes to picking the perfect cup for your personal choice of hot drink, do think of the environment. And take an extra moment to look at your KLIX vending cup in a new light knowing that it may have an exciting journey and new life ahead of it! Many of our KLIX cups go on to be made into all sorts of useful products such as rulers, pens, pencils and key rings.
Find out more about KLIX sustainability.
[1]UK only 2009
[1]www.marsdrinks.com
