Costa and the great recycled coffee cup con
High Street giant declares it’s greener than the other chains but waste firm rubbishes the claim
BRITAIN’s biggest coffee chain has been accused of misleading customers with ‘cynical greenwash’ claims about the recycling of its cups.
Costa has been telling the world that its cups can be recycled alongside ordinary paper waste, however one of its business partners has vehemently denied this.
In fact, more than 99 per cent of the chain’s cups end up being thrown into landfill or incinerated.
The industry is in the dock over concerns that 399 cups out of every 400 handed to customers – more than 2.5billion a year – are simply dumped. The cups are difficult to recycle because they are sealed with a polyethylene lining on the interior.
Costa, which has more than 2,000 outlets, has apparently attempted to set itself apart from other chains such as Starbucks, Caffe Nero and McDonald’s.
It said its cups did not need to have the coating separated from the paper to be recycled. A spokesman said: ‘The coating used within our takeaway cups is accepted in mixed paper recycling.’
However, the specialist coffee cup recycling business, Simply Cups, which has a contract with Costa to process a small number of its cups, insists this is not the case. A spokesman for Simply Cups said: ‘Categorically, no ifs or buts, Costa’s cups can’t be recycled along with ordinary paper waste by local councils.
‘The reason is they have a polyethylene lining on the inside of the cup that keeps the liquid in and stops the paper going soggy. It is bonded very tightly to the paper.
‘The cups that Costa uses are no different to those used by Starbucks, McDonald’s and others. They will not be accepted.’
The spokesman said there are only two specialist recycling plants able to process the cups, one in Cumbria and another in Halifax.
Simply Cups has a contract to recycle a small number of Costa cups from the chain’s outlets in offices. Millions of others collected from high street outlets go into the general waste stream.
Asked about Costa’s claim that its cups are accepted in mixed paper recycling, the spokesman from Simply Cups said: ‘I don’t know why they told you that, because that is not the case.
‘Mixed recycling would simply not be able to detach the plastic. The cup would be treated as a contaminant and rejected. It would then go to landfill or incineration.’
The industry’s failure to recycle the cups has been highlighted by chef and anti-waste campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has been backed by environment and anti-litter groups.
Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall said: ‘ Costa’s claims are absolutely extraordinary. It is almost as if they are saying their cups are extra special in some way and so they can be recycled in the normal way, but everyone else’s can’t. Their claims seem to me to be at best wilfully misleading. This looks to me like corporate greenwash of the worst and most cynical kind.’
Costa’s website boasts that its cups are ‘one of the world’s most environmentally friendly’.
Despite what Simply Cups says and the fact that other coffee shop chains admit their cups cannot go in normal waste paper recycling, Costa, refused to change its stance.
It said: ‘The coating used within our takeaway cups is accepted in mixed paper recycling. The cup is made from coated (PE plastic) board – the same used on sandwich, porridge packets, for example.
‘We know that coated board is widely recycled across the UK, in additional there are re-processors in the UK – Ace UK in Halifax and James Croppers in Cumbria – who are proactively recycling paper cups specifically.’