Single-use coffee cups could soon be recycled instead of put into landfill, if a pilot project led by Grinders Coffee and Cleanaway in WA proves successful.

About a billion coffee cups Australia-wide go into landfill each year, but a small change to consumer habits means these could soon be channelled into more sustainable paper recycling.

Coca-Cola Amatil managing director of alcohol and coffee Shane Richardson said the scheme could provide a blueprint for the successful recycling of paper coffee cups and lids across WA, and replicated into other States.

A promising factor about the trial is it required no infrastructure changes but relied simply on customers changing their habits.

The trial is a collaboration between the waste and coffee industries, including the world’s biggest maker of coffee cups, Huhtamaki. It is to be launched in four Vicinity shopping centres — Mandurah Forum, Morley Galleria, Halls Head, and Dianella Plaza — from late November.

Coffee drinkers have been trained to throw one-use cups in general waste bins because they are made of liquid paperboard, which is not accepted by most public-place recycling systems.

Under the pilot, coffee drinkers in participating shopping centres will be encouraged to squeeze and squash the cup and recycle the cup and lid in the existing co-mingled recycling, rather than general waste bin.

“Instead of throwing them in the waste bin, new signage will direct them to recycle their cups as paper, and the lids as plastic,” Mr Richardson said. “By squashing the container, the sorting equipment does not see it as a non-recyclable container for landfill but as 2D paper, so it will be directed into the paper recycling.

“By simply changing consumer habits rather than making big changes to infrastructure, we can enable these cups to be recycled.”

Working with Cleanaway, Mr Richardson the success of this would then be tracked through the mixed-paper stream in the high-tech Perth Materials Recycling Centre and hopefully on to buyers, and into new paper products.

It is planned an independent report will review the effectiveness of recycling disposable coffee cups and make recommendations.

This will allow governments, environmental agencies and authorities to take the steps required to implement recovery and recycling of coffee cups and lids in their public-place recycling systems.