Coffee cups

Disposable coffee cups are not recyclable at University of Melbourne campuses, so put yours in the red landfill bin. This is because they contain a plastic inner layer which is too difficult to separate from the paper cup during the recycling process.

Make the change to reusable cups

It is estimated Australians use 1 billion disposable coffee cups each year. That's approximately 2,700,000 paper coffee cups thrown out every day!

There are a few ways you can say no to disposable coffee cups to stop waste at the source:

• download the Green Caffeen app to swap and go a reusable cup at selected cafes on campus
• bring your own reusable cup
• choose to dine in
• pick up a Choose to Reuse mug if you’re on the Parkville campus.

Biodegradable and compostable cups

If your café stocks 'compostable' or 'biodegradable' cups, keep in mind that most of these need to be processed through commercial composting facilities in order for them to break down.

Some can be composted at home, but we can't process them through food organics buckets or compost bins on campus.

In addition to this, plastic 'biodegradable' coffee cups are often made from special materials which cannot be processed through mixed recycling streams.

So any compostable cups brought onto campus must also go in the red landfill bin.

The best option is always a reusable option.

Coffee pods

Melbourne is the home of good coffee in Australia. So why are you still throwing away coffee pods? Make the greenest choice and take your own cup to a café, or purchase a coffee machine where beans are used in bulk.

The problem with pods

Australians consume around 3 million single-serve coffee pods every single day and they are too small to be sorted correctly in the current recycling system. Millions of kilograms of aluminium and plastic have ended up in landfills since coffee pods came onto the market. Aluminium’s production is energy-intensive, and thus the material should be reused or recycled whenever possible.

Some eco-friendly alternatives to single use pods if you have a Nespresso® machine are the reuseable capsules manufactured by WayCap, Bluecup and SealPod. These and other sustainable coffee machine accessories can be found at Crema Joe.

Still hooked on pods?

If you already have a machine that uses pods, then recycle coffee pods rather than throwing them in the waste. You can recycle pods at:

• The Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry & Health Sciences has organised for a Nespresso bulk recycling/collection bin in the kitchen on Level 2 Alan Gilbert Building (location map).
• Pod collection by a company called TerraCycle, whose mission is to divert hard-to-recycle waste from landfills.
• Nespresso also sells pre-paid Australia Post satchels consumers can send back to the company for recycling, with up to 130 capsules at a time.