Almost 3,000,000,000 single use cups are set to be used in the UK this year – and just one in 25 of them will get recycled.

New figures – buried in a report released on budget day – reveal the shocking scale of the problem despite pledges to tackle the mountain of waste heading for landfill.

Campaigners have accused the government of ‘sitting on its hands’ and doing little to combat the issue despite growing public outrage.

The overwhelming majority of our disposable cups still go to landfill (Picture: Reuters)

The Paper Cup Recovery and Recycling Group (PCRRG) report showed that the number of disposable cups used has grown by more than a million a day since 2016.


While the report notes that recycling rates are increasing, it is not enough to cope with our increasing use.



In 2016, almost 2,500,000,000 cups were used in the UK and there was public outcry when it emerged that only 1 in 400 of those was being recycled.

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The rest were sent to landfill or incinerated at a terrible cost to wildlife and the environment.

Recycling levels for 2018 are expected to be much higher at 1 in 25 cups.

However, that is dwarfed by the fact that cup use will grow to 2,880,000,000 per year – or 7,890,000 per day.

So while 120,000,000 per year will get recycled, the remaining 2,765,000,000 will end up in landfill or the incinerator.

Campaigners say that’s enough to stretch around the world five-and-a-half times.

Billions of cups per year are still going to landfill or being burnt (Picture: Getty)

In January, the Commons environmental audit committee recommended that the government introduce a minimum 25p ‘latte levy’ on disposable cups.

However Chancellor Philip Hammond announced in his recent budget that he would not impose the ‘latte levy’ claiming that the drinks industry was already trying to sort out the problem.

Today, environmentalists said the problem was getting worse.

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Julian Kirby, Friends of the Earth plastic campaigner, told Metro.co.uk: ‘It’s astonishing that the Chancellor has fallen for misleading industry spin and shelved plans for a “latte levy”.

‘Public pressure may have led to more throwaway cups being recycled, but the tiny recycling rate is swamped by the growth in sales.

‘The government is sitting on its hands while the problem is actually getting worse. Hundreds of millions more cups will be chucked away this year than 2016, threatening our wildlife with yet more plastic pollution.

‘Industry targets for boosting recycling are woefully inadequate – and don’t even cover the increase in cup production.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond failed to introduce a ‘latte levy’ in October’s budget (Picture: PA)

‘A “latte levy” is supported by the public, and would encourage even more people to use refillable cups for their coffee shop visit.

‘The government’s failure to even act on single-use coffee cups makes its pledge to act decisively on plastic pollution look increasingly like insipid froth.’

There are currently more than 24,000 coffee shops in Britain and trade is booming.

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Costa Coffee’s expansion has been incredible and in August, owner Whitbread announced they were selling the chain to Coca-Cola in an eye-watering £3,900,000,000 deal.

But our love of coffee comes at great expense to our environment.

As well as cups, the vast majority of the 340,000,000 capsules bought for machines every year cannot be recycled and get dumped in landfill.



Neil Whittall, PCRRG chairman and coffee director of Huhtamaki, the biggest cup producer, attributed the growth in coffee shops to the problem of single use cups.

Your coffee pods are not recycled and are ending up as waste (Picture: Getty)

He said: ‘The industry can be justly proud of the progress it has made so far but of course we know that there is more work to do.’

Several chains offer a discount to people bringing in their own cups.

However a study by Cardiff University found that charging 25p for a disposable cup was more effective at getting people to bring their own.

Since the 5p levy on plastic bags was introduced two years ago, Brits have used more than 9,000,000,000 plastic bags.

The chair of the Commons environmental audit committee, Labour’s Mary Creagh, said the government needed to put a tax on single use cups.

She said the Chancellor had broken his promise to the British people to tackle waste

A spokesman for the Treasury said Mr Hammond had made it clear in the budget he would return to the issue ‘if sufficient progress was not made.’

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