Starbucks, the largest coffee chain in the UK has announced that it has started to trial fully recyclable cups – becoming the first chain in the country to do so.
Currently, more than 2.5 billion disposable cups are incinerated or dumped in landfills due to the fact that they are not recyclable.
It was announced earlier in the year that chains such as Starbucks, Costa, and Pret recycled fewer than one in 400 cups on average.
Starbucks responded by offering a 50p discount for customers who brought in their own reusable cups.
Thanks in part to a campaign by television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Starbucks, which has over 700 stores throughout the UK, is introducing the Frugalpac cup in a bid to curve waste.
Created by British entrepreneur Martin Myscough, the cup is able to easily separate itself from the unrecyclable plastic liner found at the base.
It can also be recycled at regular paper mills and an inspection fount that the cup’s carbon footprint is roughly half of that of a normal cup at 24.6g.
Myscough said that:
People were shocked to learn that existing paper cups are only used once and rarely get recycled.
“We’ve spent the last two years developing our cup and we hope now that coffee chains and cups producers will see Frugalpac as an answer to this issue.”
Frugalpac, which already works alongside a range of independent coffee shops, is said to be in talks with supermarkets and other coffee chains in regards to the cup.
A spokesperson for Starbuck said that, “we are very interested in finding out more about the Frugalpac cup and we will be testing it to see if it meets our standards for safety and quality, with a view to trialling its recyclability.”
More than 30 companies from around the UK has pledged to significantly increase their recycling rates by 2020 in the Paper Cup Recycling and Recovery Group.
