Call for levy on coffee cups

WALES led the way with a carrier bag charge and now there is a call for a 25p “latte levy” on the 2.5bn coffee cups that are thrown away in the UK every year.

A new report claims that enough cups are tossed aside in the UK every year to stretch around the world roughly five and a half times but fewer than one in 400 is recycled.

Westminster’s Environmental Audit Committee is today calling for a minimum 25p levy on disposable cups. The cash would be used to invest in reprocessing facilities and “binfrastructure”.

The committee spells out the particular problem with coffee cups: “Disposable coffee cups are made from paper and lined with plastic, which makes them waterproof. This plastic lining cannot be removed by most recycling facilities.

“Once used, the paper part of the cup is usually contaminated by the cup’s contents. There is no UK or European market for contaminated paper food packaging.”

The committee is calling for a target that all disposable coffee cups should be recycled by 2023. If the target is missed, it wants the UK Government to ban the cups. The committee was presented with evidence prepared by Cardiff University’s Professor Wouter Poortinga.

He reported that coffee cups in the UK created “25,000 tonnes of waste each year”.

His study found that “while a discount on reusable cups did not make any difference for reusable cup sales” a charge on disposable cups “increased the use of reusable coffee cups by 3.4%”.

The proposal was welcomed by Anne Meikle, head of WWF Cymru.

She said: “With incentives such as discounts for bringing your own cup, companies are also contributing to tackling waste– especially non-recyclable plastic waste which is particularly damaging to our environment and wildlife.”