Boston Tea Party became the first coffee chain in the UK to ban disposable cups in April 2018 | Photo credit: Boston Tea Party
Boston Tea Party has launched a new campaign urging the UK’s largest coffee chains to eliminate single-use coffee cups.
The Hey, Big Coffee Chain campaign calls on four of the UK’s largest branded coffee chains, Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Caffè Nero and Pret A Manger, to ban disposable coffee cups across their estates.
Boston Tea Party is also encouraging the public to sign its petition to the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) calling for a nationwide ban on single-use cups similar to recent bans on single-use plastic cutlery, polystyrene cups and food containers.
The UK uses an estimated 2.5 billion ‘disposable’ coffee cups every year, according to research conducted by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee – 95% of which ends up in landfill.
Founded in 1995, Boston Tea Party became the first branded coffee chain in the UK to ban disposable cups in April 2018 and has since prevented over one million single-use coffee cups from going to landfill, according to its website.
The Bristol-based café group requires takeaway coffee customers to bring their own re-usable cup, borrow a loan cup or buy an Ecoffee Cup in-store.
“This campaign is about shaking up the industry. If we can do it, why can’t the big guys? The environmental impact of single-use cups is something we can’t ignore any longer. The hospitality industry has immense power to drive real change, and we’re calling on everyone to step up and take responsibility,” said Sam Roberts, CEO, Boston Tea Party.
While Boston Tea Party recognises the efforts of various recycling initiatives, it says that less than 1% of disposable coffee cups are currently recycled in the UK.
In April 2018, Costa Coffee launched the National Cup Recycling Scheme in partnership with sustainability compliance firm Valpak with the aim of recycling 500 million takeaway coffee cups by 2020. The following year, seven further coffee businesses – including McDonald’s, Pret A Manger, Caffè Nero and Greggs – joined the initiative, which sees the retailers pay £70 for every tonne of cup waste collected.
The scheme’s participants have collectively recycled 204 million coffee cups to-date, according to the National Cup Recycling Scheme website.
In June 2021, US coffee giant Starbucks said it would introduce its reusable Cup-Share programme across European stores by 2025. A pilot of the programme, which sees customers order takeaway coffee in reusable cups that can then be returned to the store for cleaning, began in London in February 2022.
World Coffee Portal’s Project Café UK 2024 report shows that 52% of industry leaders surveyed believe the UK branded coffee shop industry can be proud of its efforts to tackle sustainability to date, up from 28% the previous year.
However, tackling single-use waste remains an important issue for UK coffee shop consumers, with 38% of those surveyed highlighting packaging and plastic use as the greatest sustainability challenge currently facing the UK coffee industry, ahead of social issues (10%) and waste (9%).
