Costa To Recycle as Many Cups as it Makes By 2020

• Aiming to recycle 500 million disposable cups
• Will recycle its cups as well as from competitors
• Costa is the UK’s biggest coffee shop chain

Costa has pledged to recycle as many disposable cups as it sells by 2020, in an effort to cut the number sent to landfill.

Costa, which is the largest coffee shop chain in the UK, said it will recycle up to 500 million disposable coffee cups a year, including those from other retailers, to match the number it hands out.

It has also urged other chains to do the same.

This comes after the Government announced it would not be introducing a charge on the disposable cups, known as the Latte Levy, despite them being harmful to the environment.

Costa said it will pay waste collectors a supplement of £70 per tonne of cups they send to recycling plants, making it commercially attractive for them to put in place the infrastructure to take the cups to specialist facilities.

There are currently just three facilities in the UK that can recycle the cups, which is why less than 1% of takeaway coffee cups get recycled.

Costa said the recycling move would work alongside other efforts it is making to encourage customers to use reusable cups- including a 25p discount for those who bring their own cup from home.

Dominic Paul, Costa managing director, said, “By creating a market for cups as a valuable recyclable material, we are confident that we can transform the UK’s ineffective and inconsistent ‘binfrastructure’ to ensure hundreds of millions of cups get recycled every year.

“One hundred million cups will be recycled this year alone, following today’s announcement, and if that nation’s other coffee chains sign up, there is no reason why all takeaway cups could not be recycled as early as 202.

“At Costa, we want to guarantee our customers that if they throw their cup into a recycling bin, it will get recycled, and today’s announcement is a major step towards that happening.”

What do you think about this? Should other chains do the same? Let us know in the comments.