Latte levy: What is the proposal, and how could it help save the environment?

MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee are asking for the Government to introduce a “latte levy” – essentially a 25p charge on every disposable coffee cup bought by consumers.

It is estimated that the UK throws away around 2.5bn disposable coffee cups a year and almost all are incinerated, exported or sent to landfill because their plastic lining makes them expensive to recycle.

Evidence heard by the committee during its inquiry claimed that less than one per cent of coffee cups are recycled because there are only three facilities in the UK that can split the paper and plastic components.

And last year researchers at Cardiff University concluded that charging 25p for every coffee cup would help cut the number used by up to 300m a year.

Yes. But many critics – and companies themselves – believe the discounts offered are not doing enough to encourage consumers to cut down on their waste.

Pret A Manger, for example, earlier this week announced that it will double its discount to 50p in an effort to reduce waste.

And Starbucks has said the company will start a three-month trial next month of imposing a 5p charge for disposable cups in up to 25 London stores, adding that its trial of a 50p discount for customers using reusable cups in 2016 “did not move the needle in the way we thought it might”.

Just 1.8 per cent of the company’s customers currently use recyclable cups.

The highly successful plastic bag initiative, introduced in 2015, has already reduced the number of single-use plastic bags being used by consumers by around 85 per cent. But advocates of the 25p charge for disposable coffee cups suggests this was devised with the idea in mind that people use several bags when they shop, making the overall charge higher than 5p.

Charities, on the whole, have been enthusiastic about the report’s recommendations. Laura Foster, the head of clean seas at the Marine Conservation Society, said the charge would be similar to the plastic bag charge introduced in 2015 and would “help consumers think about whether to take a refill cup to the café”.

Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall branded the problem “horrendous” and one that needs “urgent action”.

Environmental charity Hubbub said it was “disappointed” that the industry had not used lessons from two successful cup recycling campaigns – one in London which recycled more than four million cups since its launch in April 2017 and another in Manchester which recycled almost 30,000 cups from one street alone – to achieve wider impact.

A spokeswoman said: “We welcome this report and hope it will stimulate the industry to do more.”

The Government has recently taken action to tackle plastic bags and is also under pressure to act more widely on non-recyclable plastics. It is yet to reply to the committee’s recommendations.

But a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the Government “will closely consider the committee’s recommendations and respond shortly”.

They added: “We are encouraged by industry action to increase the recycling of paper cups with some major retail chains now offering discounts to customers with reusable cups.”

The committee says that the revenue generated from the producer will be collected and managed by a central body and then used to fund recycling infrastructure for the remaining cups still in use by consumers.

The MPs add: “As the recycling rate for coffee cups improves, the levy could be lowered year on year. This would encourage good management of the revenue from the levy.

“To ensure that disposable coffee cups and other types of paper food packaging are captured and recycled, the revenue from the 25p coffee cup charge should be used to support local councils to provide food packaging recycling bins and waste management. Disposable food packaging collected in these bins could be recycled in a similar way to the initiatives shown through in-store recycling schemes.

“A proportion of the revenue could also be used to support a wide-reaching public communications campaign that would provide easily digestible information on best-practice recycling while on-the-go, therefore reducing litter and improving recycling of all types of food packaging waste.”