Why Britain’s 2.5 billion paper coffee cups are an eco disaster

With only one in 400 cups recycled, and even those barely ‘green’, the hunt is on for an alternative

Britain gets through 2.5 billion of them every year, and the number is set to increase. But despite a growing clamour for coffee chains to make their cups more environment-friendly, the vast majority are used only once, which critics say is a considerable waste of natural resources.

One company vying to produce a truly recyclable alternative claims that the UK’s caffeine addiction is responsible for the felling of a million trees a year. An independent study it commissioned suggests that almost 1.5 billion litres of water go into making the cups the UK uses annually.

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from World news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3bG8GVT