In news to make you feel less guilty about your daily flat white, Costa Coffee are going to start recycling your used paper cups – including those from other cafes.
The UK’s biggest coffee chain has announced a new initiative which will see truckloads of the receptacles taken to one of the two specialist recycling plants capable of pulling apart the mix of paper and plastic that makes the cups tricky to handle.
The scheme will run in 2,000 of their outlets, where baristas will collect cups on recycling racks. The cups are then taken to the plant, where they’re turned into ‘moulded fibre products.’
Announcing the plan on Twitter, Costa said: “We now recycle ANY paper takeaway cup (yes, even ones from those other brands you’d never dream of visiting!)”
And here’s a handy guide to the process.
Also bonus: you can also get 25p off any drink if you bring in a reusable cup.
River Cottage Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall brought mass attention to the cup chaos with his BBC1 Series ‘Hugh’s War On Waste.’ He revealed that we throw away 2.5 billion takeaway cups every year in this country, with the vast majority of those heading to landfill.
After the negative publicity this generated – Costa refused to give Fearnley-Whittingstall an interview on the programme – it looks like there’s been an understanding that the public is not impressed by a lack of eco credentials.
According to Buzzfeed, Costa have also said that they are working with packaging companies to “explore manufacturing processes and test materials for a potential new takeaway cup,” which would be more widely recyclable.