Selfridges turns coffee cups into shopping bags

SELFRIDGES is launching a double attack on waste by turning paper coffee cups into shopping bags.

Only a tiny proportion of the 2.5billion cups used in the UK each year are recycled as they have a thin plastic coating which makes it difficult to process them with normal paper waste. Many go to landfill.

Selfridges has formed a partnership with a specialist recycling firm that is able to remove the plastic. Cups from the London department store’s food hall and offices will be collected and sent to a reprocessing plant in Cumbria, where they will be turned into paper to make the iconic Selfridges yellow shopping bags.

It follows the Daily Mail’s Curb The Cups campaign to urge coffee shops to cut the number of cups that are simply thrown away.