Coffee cup fee could cut waste by 300m a year

INTRODUCING charges on disposable coffee cups could help cut the number being thrown away by up to 300 million a year, experts say.

Charging a fee, similar to the 5p charge on plastic bags, does encourage customers to bring a reusable cup, a study found.

Disposable cups have a thin plastic coating that means they cannot easily be recycled. As many as 2.5billion a year are dumped or burned in the UK.

Starbucks gives customers a 25p discount if they bring a reusable cup, while Costa gives a 25p donation to charity. But Cardiff University academics found such discounts had little impact.

However, adding a charge on disposable cups increased the use of reusable ones by 3.4 per cent. The study, involving 12 small coffee shops, found putting up signs about the environment in cafes also helped, boosting reusable cup usage by 2.3 per cent.

Offering reusable cups in stores led to a 2.5 per cent rise and giving out free ones led to a 4.3 per cent rise. Lead researcher Professor Wouter Poortinga, an environmental psychologist, said: ‘There is an important nuance with financial incentives. People are far more sensitive to losses than gains – so if we want to change a customer’s behaviour a charge is more likely to work.’

He said the use of reusable cups could be increased by up to 12.5 per cent using a combination of strategies including a charge and this could mean 300 million fewer cups being dumped.

The findings of the study, funded by Bewley’s tea and coffee company, will be presented to the MPs’ environmental audit committee, which is considering cup charges as well as new designs that are more easily recycled.

It comes after the Daily Mail’s Curb the Cups campaign highlighted the issue. The Mail has also campaigned for a plastic bottle deposit scheme. The number of plastic bags issued fell by more than 70 per cent after the bag charge was introduced.