Recycling coffee cups is just rubbish

ONLY one in 400 coffee cups is recycled a new poll has found as experts warned that even if you throw them in recycling bins they are not reused.

Half of people believe their disposable coffee cups are being recycled all or most of the time but very few are, the survey suggests.

It also found that only one in 10 of those questioned used specialist in-store recycling bins to discard their used paper coffee cups, raising questions about their usefulness in encouraging recycling.

As many as 2.5 billion paper coffee cups are thrown away in the UK each year – and just one in 400 is recycled as it is difficult to separate the plastic coating from the recyclable cardboard.

But the poll found 50 per cent of respondents thought most or all of their cups were recycled.

The research also found that most people (89 per cent) thought coffee shops should stock recyclable paper cups and 92 per cent said they thought it was important to be able to dispose of takeaway cups within the normal paper recycling system.

Martin Myerscough, founder of Frugalpac, said consumers were assuming that by placing their cup in a recycling bin, they had “done their bit” – which would be true if coffee cups were manufactured to go in any recycling bin.

“The simplest way of encouraging people and business to reduce their contribution to waste is to give them products which can be recycled easily,” he said.

He added that while retailers had made great progress in placing increased numbers of recycling bins inside and outside stores, “without materially changing the product that is going into the bin, this will have little effect in the long term”.

The poll of 2,005 people was carried out by ICM Unlimited for Frugalpac, which has developed a cup that it says can be put into standard recycling bins.