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No wonder, then, that the industry is trying hard to improve its environmental record through the supply of more energy-efﬁcient vending machines, fair trade ingredients and the introduction of waste reduction initiatives. Drinks vending machines have an environmental impact in a number of key areas – manufacture, distribution, energy consumption, servicing and disposal/ recycling at end of life.

For pragmatists the area of greatest interest is likely to be the energy consumption of vending machines, as this will have the most immediate impact on energy bills and carbon footprints. This is also the area where manufacturers have expended most effort, largely because, as Automatic Vending Association (AVA) technical adviser Mike Saltmarsh told

Sustainable Times, it is “the simplest thing to improve.”

The two most effective energy-saving measures are the replacement of ﬂuorescent lighting with LED lights that last longer and consume less energy and the introduction of sleep modes that, by turning off the lights and reducing the temperature within the boiler, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 50% compared to idle mode.

Power management systems are usually activated by a timer, putting the machine into sleep mode outside ofﬁce hours for example, but they can also be linked to motion sensors like the Vend-Sense from Automatic Retailing (Technical) Ltd, which powers down a machine if it has not detected movement for a certain length of time. Other energy-saving features of modern machines include ﬂash cooling technology for cold drink selections; gravity-fed brewing systems; and improved insulation – N&W Global Vending claims to have reduced the energy consumption of its machines by 13% simply by improving the insulation of instant boilers.

The European Vending Association (EVA) recently introduced an energy measurement protocol that can be used to calculate the power consumption of machines, expressed as Energy Consumption Per Litre (ECPL), when they are warming up, vending a drink and standing idle. Test results are a useful guide for both manufacturers and consumers, with bothWestomatic and Mars Drinks (see box on page 30) using the results in their marketing material.

Greater energy efﬁciency strengthens the case for installing a vending machine to replace the ofﬁce kettle (though, according to the Carbon Trust, the latter is the most energy-efﬁcient option for people that work outside normal ofﬁce hours). But what about the waste generated by vending machines, in particular disposable plastic and paper cups?

This has long been a focus for vending’s critics. It was partly to draw their sting, but also to head off the threat of a levy on plastic cups that in 1992 the vending industry set up the Save-a-Cup recycling scheme, which collects used cups and recycles them into stationery products.

Last year the scheme collected 1,300 tonnes of hardwall polystyrene cups. To give you some idea of the scale of the waste problem, it takes 250,000 cups to make one tonne, and Save-a-Cup estimates that it collects just 10% of the UK’s used cups. Even when you take into account the efforts of alternative collection schemes, billions of plastic cups still end up in the waste stream. Clearly, any business that does not yet recycle its plastic cups should start doing so. This can either be done through an existing waste management company or through Save-a-Cup, which has now expanded its service to cover paper cups, an increasingly popular alternative to plastic cups as customers aim to recreate that coffee shop ambience and vend quality.

On the face of it, paper cups are a greener option: they come from a sustainable material; have a short carbon cycle; many are FSC or PEFC certiﬁed; and much of the paper and board produced in Europe is made using hydro-electric or biomass as an energy source. On the downside, they are heavier than plastic cups and due to a PE plastic coating can be difﬁcult to recycle. In November last year, The Paper Cup Recovery and Recycling Group made a breakthrough when it completed a trial in which virtually all the cellulose ﬁbre from PE-coated paper cups was successfully extracted and converted into ﬁbre for use in tissues and toilet rolls, effectively making a standard hot drinks paper cup 95% recyclable. A number of suppliers now offer compostable cups that use a corn starch-derived bio-plastic for the lining. These, too, are collected by Save-a-Cup, which takes them to industrial composting facilities where they are shredded and eventually break down into compost.

For customers with recycling programmes in place the main beneﬁt of such cups is not their compostability, as recycling comes before composting and incineration in the hierarchy of waste, but the fact that producing a bio-plastic like NatureWorks PLA uses 65% less fossil fuels than traditional plastics. Despite of these developments, the best option is probably still to choose a vending machine that dispenses drinks straight into employees’ own mugs. Many modern machines have sensors that make this possible, enabling an organisation to reduce the amount of waste generated and potentially eliminate the need for disposable cups altogether.

Mike Saltmarsh claims that waste from packaging is not a major problem for the industry: “Packaging tends not to be elaborate because you are not selling it to the consumers”.

Yet, there are exceptions, such as small desktop systems with individually packaged drinks and a range of additional ingredients often arranged alongside snacks in display units. Here, too, improvements are being made as suppliers introduce new packaging concepts, like the DairyStix milk in a stick range from Single Source.