UK’s Costa Coffee, a part of Whitebread, has pledged to recycle over a half a billion takeaway cups per year by 2020, in a bid to prevent them from ending up in landfill.
The coffee chain, which plans to recycle at least 100 million cups, intends to achieve its goal by paying waste collectors to collect coffee cups and send them to recycling plants.
As part of the plan, the coffee chain aims to recycle up to 500 million disposable cups by 2020 which is equivalent to amount of cups it uses in a year.
Costa managing director Dominic Paul commented: “Following today’s announcement up to 100 million cups will be recycled this year alone and if the nation’s other coffee chains sign up, there is no reason why all takeaway cups could not be recycled by as early as 2020.
“At Costa we want to guarantee our customers that if they throw their cup into the right recycling bin it will get recycled, and today’s announcement is a major step towards that happening.
“We have set our own target to recycle the same volume of takeaway cups we use every year and call on other cup retailers to join and help to build a dynamic market for takeaway coffee cup recycling.”
UK waste collection companies Veolia, Biffa, Suez, Grundon and First Mile are cooperating with Costa in the scheme.
The new scheme is expected to increase the number coffee cups to be recycled by Costa from 14 million to 100 million this year alone.
UK Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey said: “We want to help companies become plastic free and through our 25 Year Environment Plan we are putting in place the ambitions to encourage all of us to play our part in ending the scourge of plastic waste in our natural environment.”
The scheme will see Costa give an extra £70 to waste collectors for every ton of collected cups.
Costa, which recently announced its plan to remove all plastic straws from its stores, will also offer a 25p discount to all customers who use reusable cup.
