Starbucks is going to start charging some customers 5p for a paper cup
The coffee chain will charge Londoners an extra 5p when they buy their tea or coffee in a paper cup as part of a three-month trial
COFFEE chain Starbucks is going to start charging customers 5p for ordering their teas and coffee in a paper cup.
The high street chain will be trialling the scheme in its London cafes in a bid to get more people to use reusable ones.
Starbucks have 900 stores in the UK and they will be testing the waters in 25 coffee shops in London.
Starting in February and lasting three months, customers who use the shops involved in the trials will be charged an extra 5p for their drink if it's in a paper cup.
The coffee chain said that it wants to see if the additional charge on paper cups will encourage people to use reusable ones.
The news comes on the same day MPs are calling for a 25p tax on "disposable" coffee cups and threaten to ban them altogether if the latte levy doesn't work.
Starbucks sell their own resuable cups for £1. They cut the price in half to 50p during a trial in 2016.
"We found that this did not move the needle in the way we thought it might," Starbucks said in the statement.
"We will investigate the impact of a 5p charge on a paper cup, coupled with prominent marketing of reusable cups, on customer behaviour."
25P LATTE LEVY MPs demand 25p tax on ‘disposable’ coffee cups and threaten a BAN if it doesn’t cut waste
Starbucks is hoping that the charge might have the same effect as the ban on free plastic bags in supermarkets.
Since a 5p charge was adopted by England back in 2014 there has been a drop of 83 per cent in the amount of plastic bags used.
Today the powerful Commons Environmental Audit Committee called for the charge in a bid to get all throwaway cups recycled by 2023.
And if the target is not reached they insist Government should ban the cups - rarely recycled because of a plastic lining.
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Committee chair Mary Creagh said a "revolution in recycling" was needed.
She said: "The UK throws away 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups every year; enough to circle the planet five and a half times.
"Almost none are recycled and half a million a day are littered. Coffee cup producers and distributors have not taken action to rectify this and Government has sat on its hands."
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