The Latte Levy: Great Britain and Coffee Cup Recycling

Members of the government and industry in Great Britain are calling on the government to impose a new tax on disposable coffee cups of 25 pence each, and if that doesn’t work, to ban disposable cups altogether. The situation is a mess and produces too much trash and litter. The money collected by the tax will go to fund recycling infrastructure and public communication campaigns regarding recycling best practices.

With 2.5 billion paper coffee cups being disposed of annually, can’t they just recycle? Apparently not, because paper coffee cups have a plastic lining that keeps the hot coffee inside the cup. The process of separating the paper and plastic is challenging, and it mostly can’t be done with the current recycling systems. The cups end up incinerated or in landfills.

Cup manufacturers have claimed they are using disposable and recyclable materials, and their responsibility is to produce a cup that will do the job. They have succeeded in making a cup that is waterproof, keeps coffee hot, has a tight-fitting plastic lid, and with a cardboard sleeve, can be carried by hand.

Public opinion is slowly raising its head, like Grendel, sleeping peacefully in his cave until Beowulf pokes him with a sharp stick. 25p per cup, about 34 cents, is a sharp stick.

The coffee shop industry has tried to encourage coffee drinkers to bring their own mugs by offering discounts on coffee prices. The efforts did not produce the changes that were hoped for. The new proposed initiative will hopefully awake consumers to the challenges posed to recycling a morning cup.

Some nondisposable cups function nearly as well as the current paper cups with plastic lids. Also called travel cups or insulated mugs, they keep coffee hot and have a drinkable top that usually keeps coffee from spilling down our shirts when we drink and walk. Our traditional ceramic mugs, stoneware or porcelain, don’t work anymore because we carry our coffee with us and drink it while walking. If our coffee drinking was confined to sitting at a table, proper mugs and cups could be used, and then washed after. The change is not just in coffee cups, but in how much coffee, getting coffee and drinking coffee and walking around with coffee, is part of our daily routines. Coffee is a 24/7 deal.

Problem-solving the disposable cup issue will involve the paper coffee cup industry designing another cup that works as well as the current model, but is easily recyclable. Alternatively, recycling infrastructure needs to be developed that can separate the paper and plastic; or we need to change our behavior, and all begin to carry travel mugs, or we need to stop walking around with our coffee in hand, and only drink coffee when we are sitting at a table or desk.