K-Cup recycling too popular for Wheaton's to handle

An initiative to recycle K-Cups — the single serve disposable coffee cups — has had to be scaled back because its proven too popular.

• K-Cup recycling offered by Wheaton's furniture in Moncton

The furniture and decor company Wheaton's originally announced in September that its stores in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick would take K-Cups and deliver them to the Dartmouth Adult Services Centre (DASC), where workers with intellectual disabilities were hired to break them down for recycling.

"It's been an overwhelming success I guess is the best way to put it," said managing director of Wheaton's, David Bradford. "Right from the start the volume that came in was a little overwhelming."

Less than halfway into the pilot, the 11 tonnes of K-Cups the company had collected proved too much.

Volume too high

"There was no way we could handle such a volume," said DASC executive director Cathy Deagle-Gammon. "It was just so much."

"When we first started this we were so worried. It was so dependent on customers returning their K-Cups and we were wondering will they or won't they," said Deagle-Gammon. "And wow, people just turned out in spades, which was lovely."

Bradford says the thousands of K-Cups came to them from across the Maritimes, and beyond.

"We had responses from odd places," said Bradford. "We had a call come from the state government of Nevada wanting to send us their K-Cups to be recycled. They were willing to pay to have them shipped up."

Wheaton's says their stores will only accept the cups that have been purchased at their stores for now, and the partnership with DASC is on hold until the companies can work out a better way to recycle all those cups in the new year.