Costa coffee chain announces PP lined cups buyback

The national coffee shop chain Costa, part of the Whitbread group, has said it will recycle the equivalent of its takeaway cup stock through a buyback with five recycling companies.

The pledge from Britain’s largest coffee shop company could tackle 500million cups used annually by 2020.

From this week, Costa will pay £70 per tonne to Veolia, Biffa, Suez, Grundon and First Mile, the recycling companies will receive the payments for takeaway cups from any outlet. The plan could improve the market incentives for collection and recycling of the polypropylene lined paper cups.

Dominic Paul, managing director of Costa, said: “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.”

David Palmer-Jones, CEO of SUEZ UK, said: “SUEZ has long-backed the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and we truly believe that producer-contribution schemes have the potential to transform the long-term sustainability outlook for the UK – moving us all closer to achieving a circular economy, where materials are used and re-used over and over again.

EPR is a fair and equitable concept which sees producers help to mitigate the costs associated with recycling the products and packaging they place into the market.

We applaud Costa for leading the charge to help tackle the challenges associated with recycling coffee cups, and we hope that this financial incentive helps Costa to meet its ambition of recycling 500 million cups a year by 2020 – while also perhaps encouraging others in this market to follow suit and take similar action.”