Coffee makes mornings bearable and perks up afternoons. But your favourite barista’s brew is leaving a lot of waste.
In the UK we recycle fewer than 1 in 400 take-away coffee cups.
The big coffee chains make billions of pounds in profit. Meanwhile, many of them have given us the impression their cups are recycled. And yet because of a plastic film on the inside, very few actually are, even if you put it in your own recycling bin.
As many as 2.5 billion take-away coffee cups may be chucked away each year.
It’s time these multi-billion pound businesses were made to wake up and smell the coffee. We don’t see why you should fork out to help them clean up their business when you already pay through the nose for hot water, beans and milk.
That’s why we want environment minister Rory Stewart to get the café chains to reward you for taking your own cup. He should also ban take-away cups that can’t be recycled and get café chains to provide recycling bins.
We reduced plastic bag waste so let’s do the same with cups.
Sign our petition to make sure you get rewarded for taking your own cup to the café.
Please sign the Petition to Rory Stewart
Text of the petition below:
Let’s end waste from coffee cups
Dear Mr Stewart,
I want to enjoy my coffee from my favourite café and know that my cup won’t end up polluting our environment or in landfill.
I want to take my own cup to the café and be rewarded for it. And if I need a coffee on the go, then I want to be able to recycle my take away coffee cup.
But I want the coffee companies, who make massive profits, to come up with a solution and not make me pay for it.
That’s why I want you to get all the big coffee chains to give me some money off if I take my own cup in. I also want you to ban take-away cups that can’t be recycled and require the big coffee chains to provide me with a recycling bin for when I don‘t have my cup with me.
