HAVE THE FRENCH GOT IT RIGHT?

It has been six months since the French Government imposed a strict list of regulations for the use of disposable coffee cups across France. The September 2016 directive was introduced with the aim of reducing waste and tackling climate change as well as the more basic requirement of keeping the cities of France litter free.

The rules will see disposable non compostable cups and plates banned across the country by 2020. Coffee cups currently amount of more than one million every minute being placed in large holes in the ground and forgotten about.

Whilst France has taken a huge leap forward in combating this menace, here in the United Kingdom we are still debating the issue with local, regional and national government batting the issue from side to side without any decisions having been made.

UKVending is all about great tasting coffee, but we also take our environmental and recycling extremely seriously. We believe that Britain should follow France in introducing tough new regulations; and it doesn’t mean hardship for the coffee chains. They simply need to change by using cups that can be recycled or composted more easily than the ones they currently use. Alternatively they can use KeepCups or other similar products in preference to the 2.5 billion non recyclable coffee cups thrown away each year in Britain. Remember that fewer than one in 400 coffee chain paper cups are recycled.

The UK Government has wisely introduced a 5p charge on plastic supermarket bags and the result has been a staggering success. Demand for plastic bags has been slashed with people preferring to re-use bags already bought. Would a similar charge for coffee cups solve another environmental time bomb? Here at UKVending we don’t know if it will solve the problem, but it would certainly be a more in the right direction.