The fight against polluting coffee cups is hotting up. The government has announced a “war on plastic”, and companies are beginning to wake and smell the coffee -- Pret A Manger has changed its policy to give a 50p discount if you bring your own cup. 

Now let’s call on their competitor Costa to follow suit! 

Sign to tell Costa Coffee to follow Pret's lead and give customers 50p off for using reusable cups!

Britain discards 2.5 BILLION coffee cups every single year, worse still just 1% end up getting recycled. And Costa gets almost half of all our spending in chain coffee shops across the UK, so its contributions to this waste are huge. 

We’re at a critical juncture in the fight to save the planet. It’s estimated that it takes 100,000 trees a year to fuel the UK’s coffee habit.  What’s more, coffee cups and are almost impossible to recycle and will take thousands of years to degrade -- filling up landfills and endangering wildlife. 

And since China recently banned our waste imports, plastic waste is already piling up in the UK -- we need to act now and act fast. 

Sign to tell Costa Coffee to follow Pret a Manger's lead and give customers 50p off for using reusable cups! 

SumOfUs members like you are stepping up our efforts to tackle plastic waste. Last week we called for a ‘Latte Levy’, like Britain’s existing plastic bag charge, if you don’t bring a reusable cup. But it will take time to change the law -- so we’re calling on companies like Costa to act more quickly too. 

We’re also taking on McDonald’s, whose plastic straws are clogging up our oceans and killing marine life. The good news is McDonald’s is starting to respond to pressure! Just yesterday it said it will ditch polystyrene packaging, under pressure from shareholders. If SumOfUs members continue our efforts, plastic straws could be next!

Costa Coffee must hold itself accountable for its contribution to deforestation and overflowing landfill sites. It can afford to follow Pret’s lead and knock 50p off the price of a coffee for customers with reusable cups.

Green MP Caroline Lucas has said the key to the nation’s plastic cups problem was to encourage the use of reusable cups, over the famously difficult process of recycling used ones. “It seems to be that [reusable cups] are the best solution if we can get to that”.

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