We have always been aware of our impact on the earth, which is why we make decisions based on our purpose of ‘Making Things Better’

We’ve always done what we can to reduce, reuse and recycle. We’d stopped using plastic straws and bottles in 2017. The elephant in the room was the vast amount of single-use coffee cups which left our cafes, destined for the bin, or worse, the ground, so they had to go. In 2018 we looked at the reality of the situation, risked £1,000,000 of takeaway hot drinks sales and decided the only way to make a meaningful difference was to stop giving out single use cups, full stop.

Here are the figures that cemented our decision:

Only 1 in 400 (0.25%) of the estimated 2.5 billion plastic coated coffee cups* used in the UK each year are recycled. 4%, approximately 500,000, are littered every day. The rest (95.75%) go into landfill. Many compostable alternatives also end up in landfill as there aren’t enough accessible facilities in the UK to compost them.

When you pop in for a takeaway coffee, these are your options:

• To bring your own reusable cup
  We don’t care what it looks like, what it’s made of, or where you got it from, if it can hold your coffee, we’ll fill it up.

• To buy a reusable cup
  We’ve teamed up with the brilliant Ecoffee Cup to offer you a subsidised, biodegradable reusable option. You can pick from a rainbow of colours, prices start from £4.25.

• To use our “loan cup scheme”
  Because we all can be a bit forgetful, we’ve set up a refundable deposit scheme so you can ‘loan’ a cup from us. Drop it back to any of our cafes and get a full refund.

The response we’ve had to the ban is incredible – check out the Facts and Figures page to see how many cups we’ve stopped entering landfill to date.

We’re proud to be the first and we want others to join us. With your help, this can be a movement.