Current Students and Staff

These days more and more of us are grabbing coffee to go from one of the big name coffee shops. But have you ever stopped to think about the consequences?

It’s estimated that 2.5 billion take-out coffee cups are being used, and discarded, in the UK each year. That’s almost 5,000 a minute.

At Loughborough we’re getting through more than 750,000 disposable cups a year – if you stacked all those cups inside one another they’d form a tower 117 times higher than our iconic Towers Hall!

Nationally less than 6 million cups (under 0.25% of the total used) are recycled a year, mainly because the cups are tricky to process – a specialist company has to remove the plastic used to laminate the cups before the paper is pulped.

So we want to do our bit to help tackle the problem, inspired by the Wake Up and Smell the Waste campaign being spearheaded by the writer, broadcaster and campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

We’re producing a reusable Loughborough mug, so you can continue to enjoy your favourite coffee (or tea, of course) and help the environment at the same time.

We’re working on two possible design options and we want to know which you prefer. The most popular will then go into production and be available on campus next academic year! The chosen design will be available in a number of different colours.

Let us know which is your favourite by taking part in our quick poll.