A typical New Zealand-made coffee cup begins life in the forests of Russia, after which a Finnish company coats the paper in plastic and ships it to Henderson, West Auckland, where Huhtamaki shapes it into takeaway cups.
The caffeine-loving public gets through about 180 million disposable cups a year, including ones made overseas, says Huhtamaki market manager of food service Jeff Mosen. Most of the cups end up in landfills.
The sheer waste would make our forebears turn in their graves, says Meredith Graham, education and marketing manager at recycling company Visy. "They'd say, 'Really? You buy coffee when you're out and you throw the cup away?"'
Enter a new co-operative effort between the country's biggest takeaway coffee seller BP, Visy, Huhtamaki, Coca-Cola and public recycling cheerleader Love NZ, to encourage people to recycle the cups.
Many people wrongly think they can recycle the cups already, says Love NZ manager Lyn Mayes, but in fact, only Christchurch and Auckland (except Waitakere and North Shore) have facilities to process wet-strength paper (the plastic-coated stuff used for hot and cold drinking cups and Tetra Pak cartons) from home recycling bins.
By definition, most people drink takeaway coffee when they are out, and recycling receptacles for coffee cups at public places and events have been relatively few and far between. The campaign – complete with specially stickered recycling bins announcing that they can now take coffee cups – hopes to change that and will begin collecting cups at Auckland's Chinese lantern festival in February, carrying on to Wellington and elsewhere as recycling arrangements allow.
The ultimate goal is to join the dots between between caffeine-hungry punters, the few companies that can sort wet-strength paper in New Zealand, and buyers for the paper fibre overseas.
New Zealanders may have arrived late to the espresso party, but for the past two decades they been drinking enough flat whites, long blacks and cappuccinos to make up for lost time.
The cup problem is "screaming out for a solution", says Zeke Alley, head of purchasing at pioneer Wellington coffee roaster Cafe L'Affare. Cafe L'Affare's wholesale business alone gets through tens of thousands of cups a month, making it Huhtamaki's biggest cup customer after BP.