Costa Coffee will now recycle 500 million cups a year

Popular UK chain, Costa Coffee, has announced it will recycle the equivalent of its entire yearly sales of coffee cups by 2020.

The company revealed the seismic change in a statement today, which will guarantee the cups are recycled by paying paper mills to do so instead of sending them to landfill.

Costa will pay £70 to waste collectors for every tonne of cups they collect, which it states will greatly increase the commercial value and attractiveness of recycling.

At present, coffee cups can be recycled but only if they are properly collected and sent to one of three paper mills in the country which have sufficient infrastructure to do so. Costa’s decision will mean these factories will increase the number of coffee cups they recycle from 14 million to 100 million this year.

Dominic Paul, Managing Director for Costa, said the company is “putting its money where its mouth is to find an immediate solution to increasing the volume of takeaway coffee cups being recycled in the UK…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.”

“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,” he added.

Environment Minister Thérèse Coffey, said: “Congratulations Costa on taking this significant step to help coffee lovers do the right thing and increase recycling. We all have a responsibility to our environment and this is a significant step by a British business which should dramatically increase the number of disposable coffee cups we recycle in this country.

“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.”

Costa, along with Pret a Manger offers a discount to all customers that use a reusable cup. It has also previously announced it will remove all plastic straws from its stores.