Connect Vending’s Journey Towards Sustainability

At Connect Vending, we understand the importance of sustainability, which is why we have implemented sustainability initiatives across our workforce to give a little bit back to the environment.

With initiatives ranging from bring-your-own cup schemes and cup recycling to renewable energy sources being installed across the head office there isn’t a part of the business that isn’t sustainable in some way or another. This blog explores a range of sustainability initiatives that have been implemented by Connect Vending.

Operators are at the core of what we do at Connect Vending which is why most of our sustainability initiatives are focused on the operations side of the business.

We may be in the digital age, but there are still some vending machines scattered around the nation that accept cash payments alongside the more commonly used card and contactless payment methods. When our operators collect cash from machines, they use reusable cloth cash bags rather than single use plastic money bags.

Over the recent years hygiene has become even more important which is why our operations team have made the switch from single use sanitiser and glass cleaner plastic bottles to refillable bottles. Each operator is given 2 bottles each, and every week when they come to refill their vans, they refill their cleaning supplies. Making this switch has prevented 3,500 bottles from going to landfill every year.

Using refillable bottles isn’t the only way we prevent waste from going to landfill, we also have a vast recycling scheme which extends across the business. As you can imagine there is a lot of cardboard and plastic wrappers than enter our warehouse and our delivery vans. To reduce waste, our operators collect the packaging after completing their restocking at each site, loads the cardboard and plastic wrap back into their vans and brings it back to the warehouse. From here the cardboard is put in a bailer, compressed together, and sent off to a recycling depot to be reused. The recycle initiatives don’t stop there, we also have an extensive cup recycling scheme which we implement both in the office and at our sites. Although we encourage a bring-your-own- mug scheme both in our office and at our external sites, we haven’t eliminated the use of single-use coffee cups. To tackle the waste produced by single-use coffee cups we work with Grundon to recycle the cups.

In the food and beverage industry, food waste is unavoidable but there are ways to reduce the amount of waste you produce. At Connect Vending, we work with Olio which is a food donation charity. Every time an operator goes to site they conduct a stock take and check all of the dates, so when they find a food item that is nearing expiry they notify the Olio app, which arranges a volunteer to come to the site, where possible, and collect the items so they can be redistributed across the community to help those in need. During one quarter, Connect Vending has fed 206 households and saved 1844 meals from going to waste. In areas where Olio is not available, our operators work with other charities such as the Food Bank, to give back to the community and reduce the waste we produce.

As you can imagine there is a lot of driving involved in our business which can result in a lot of CO2 emissions entering the atmosphere. To tackle this, we are working on electrifying out fleet, we currently have 5 electric vehicles which has significantly reduced the emissions we emit into the environment. In summer 2025, we also upgraded our forklift to be electric rather than diesel which is both cost effective and better for the environment due to the amount of short journeys the forklift makes.

Due to the nature of our industry, electric vehicles are not always possible, so to tackle this obstacle all our operator and engineers’ vans use add blue fuel.  The vans are also replaced regularly to ensure we are adhering to the latest regulations, whilst preventing ageing vehicles from emitting too many fumes. In the past we have trialled a fully electric fleet, however at this moment in time, this was not feasible for us due to strict response times our engineers follow, and not getting as many miles out of each charge compared to our more traditional approach.

Our head office has been working on becoming more sustainable for many years. In 2012 we installed solar panels to our office building which are used to power and heat the office. It doesn’t stop there; in May 2025 we upgraded the solar panel inverter which means that our solar panels offer increased efficiency and better monitoring capabilities. In 2023 we also transitioned to LED lights in our offices, which has significantly reduced the amount of electricity we use in the office.

We have also digitalised 95% of our internal processes to reduce the amount of paper we use as a company. Since transitioning from physical to digital copies of our onboarding process we have saved 200 pieces of paper per new starter.

At Connect Vending, we offer an extensive range of refurbished commercial coffee machines and business vending machines to get the most of the machine’s lifespan. We have an expert team of installation engineers who work in house to repair, restore, and refurbish vending machines to extend their life and get the most out of the machines. Once the machines have reached the end of their life, we work with a machine scrap company called DCS Scrap which are a metal recycling company that melts down the metal from the machines, reshapes them, and reuses the parts to create brand new products.

Want to find out more about our sustainability initiatives? Click here.