But guess who binned 2.5m cups?

OFFICIALS at the environment ministry have used at least 2.5million throwaway cups in five years, figures have revealed.

Civil servants did not even have the option of using green alternatives and ordered some only after receiving a freedom of information request about details of their plastic cup consumption.

Last night MPs demanded the Department for the Environment get its house in order and lead by example.

More than 2.5billion disposable cups are thrown away every year in the UK – around seven million a day. Just one in 400 is recycled. The amount of disposable plastic wasted would fill the Royal Albert Hall 1,000 times over.

The figures for Whitehall usage will come as an embarrassment for environment minister Therese Coffey, who has said she was open to introducing a coffee cup charge to cut down on waste.

The freedom of information request from the Liberal Democrats also reveals that the House of Commons itself ran through four million disposable cups in the past five years.

Parliament bought 500 reusable ‘ keep cups’ in 2013, but only four of these have been sold in the past three years.

The figures are believed to refer to all single-use cups, including plastic cups for water and coffee cups which have an inside coating of plastic.

Former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, now the party’s environment spokesman, called for a coffee cup charge of 5p.

‘It’s astounding that the department supposed to be protecting our environment is responsible for such colossal waste,’ he said. ‘ Millions of plastic cups have been t hrown away by the government.’