This popular coffee shop chain plans to recycle takeaway cups

Costa Coffee announced on Wednesday that it will try and recycle takeaway cups sold by 2020. Costa Coffee, UK's largest coffee shop chain, said that it was aiming to recycle every year up to 500 million disposable cups, which are made from a mixture of paper and plastic in their inner lining to make them heat-proof, reports Efe news.

Around 2.5 billion cups are used annually in the UK, 99.75 per cent of which are not recycled, according to Costa Coffee, which has over 2,380 branches in the UK.

Although Costa Coffee has recycling collection points, most drinks sold are consumed outside the shop.

Costa said it had launched a new initiative to work with national waste collectors and would be paying them a supplement of 70 pounds ($107) for every tonne of cups they collected.

The idea behind the initiative was to make it "commercially and financially attractive" for waste collectors to "put in place the infrastructure and processes to collect, sort and transport coffee cups to recycling plants", the company said.

(Edited by mid-day online desk, with inputs from IANS)

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