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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
British MPs waging a war on plastic are demanding a “latte levy”, to try to contain the growing environmental catastrophe caused by millions of latte sipping city dwellers discarding their coffee cups after a single use.
‘Latte levy’ of 25p urged by MPs in bid to cut cup waste
By Roger Harrabin
BBC environment analyst
5 January 2018
MPs are calling for a 25p “latte levy” on disposable coffee cups – and a total ban unless recycling improves.
A report by the Environmental Audit Committee says the tax should be used to improve the UK’s recycling and reprocessing facilities.
The MPs say throwaway cups should be prohibited altogether by 2023 if they are not all being recycled.
In response, Starbucks said it would try out a 5p cup charge in 20 to 25 central London outlets.
“We will begin the trial in February and initially it will last for three months,” the firm said, adding that it continued to offer a 25p discount to customers who brought their own reusable cups.
The government agrees plastic waste is a problem and will seek evidence on a tax on single-use plastics.
‘Revolution’ needed
The committee’s chair, Mary Creagh MP, said: “The UK throws away 2.5 billion disposable coffee cups every year – that’s 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.
“The UK’s coffee shop market is expanding rapidly, so we need to kick start a revolution in recycling.”
…
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42564948
Concerns about recycling and waste disposal have risen in Europe, since China banned imports of foreign waste back in October. Waste and recycling is a sensitive issue in Britain, substantial quantities of waste which is supposed to be recycled seems to end up in landfill or incinerators.
Make the cups eatable. Ice cream cones don’t litter the streets. Problem solved
Now that I think about it I realize there is *not* an ice cream cone pollution problem! That’s a great idea, Michael! 🙂
It appears to be an announcement that despite the referendum to leave the European Union, the MPs still implement Europe’s policies directly!
There is nothing wrong with single use packaging. It is an important part of running small businesses, and it is essential to the safety, affordability, and abundance of foods we all love to buy and sell.
Oh by the way, plastic is a petroleum product, and jwhen environmentalists want to ban some legitimate product, technology or invention, there is always some horse manure replacement product that they will force you to buy. Fake economics 101
First, find out what Europe is commanding member states. Next, see what Germany is selling. You just went a loooong way to figuring out what the political class is doing.
As for the science, I think that our local governments have done, and are supposed to do, a wonderful, top-notch job of disposing of trash. And hopefully it is not extremely expensive.
Sometimes I think these globalists want to make basic services extremely expensive, make it impossible to run a business, and turn everything but soy beans into a luxury item. For the environment, of course.
Exactly, except the global billionaires don’t want to make it impossible to run a business, they want the regulations imposed that will prevent anyone being able to afford to START A NEW business which will compete with their existing business (one which was started long ago when the barriers to start-up didn’t exist).
These “rules and regulations” are the key to a Fas ci st state and is why they hate Trump so much, because he is removing many of the costly, petty regulations that are stifling competition to their global cartel operations.
SteveT
Please don’t say that ever again. Some econut will come up with a cup made of horse manure.
Great. Then we’ll have Big Horse Manure.
8 billion people pitching plastic anything three or four times a day, 365 times a year is mind boggling. Recycling glass bottels or switching to paper cups that can be burned does make sense. Just as we can no longer leave junk floating around in space, a finite area, 8 billiin people can’t be creating trash with no regard to how it is to be disposed of. On the other hand, it took the dull of mind 3,000 years to fiqure out that crapping in the street was not a good solution. Oops, I forgot, Indian government still has problems concvincing people that it isn’t cool to dump anywhere when the mood hits one. After all, what’s 30,000,000 dumps a day!
Yeah, we should go back to delivering wine and milk in hand crafted amphorae with slave galleys. It’s nicer for the environmentalists to sleep at night.
“amtr1 January 6, 2018 at 9:32 pm
8 billion people pitching plastic anything three or four times a day, 365 times a year is mind boggling.”
8 billion people, 3 – 4 times per day, 365 times a year, on what planet? Not this one. You will find these people in latte sipping cities. Been to Ethiopia? All glass bottles are “washed”, or you could say recycled, for the locals. You can roughly work out how old a bottle is and how many times it has been used by the “wear” marks on the bottles at the collar of the neck and the bottom. They are “white” as the bottles rattle together in crates.
Who drinks coffee out of disposable plastic?
Iced coffees are served in transparent plastic cups, because they are so beautiful.
They probably are. And makes a lot more sense than hot coffee 🙂
Anyone with common sense. A disposable plastic cup is extremely thin material, and conducts heat too readily – burnt fingers if you try to pick it up when full of hot coffee. That is why there are plastic coffee cup holders, suitable for holding the cup, and with a handle for the fingers, so as to stop them getting burnt. When finished the cup goes in the proper bin to be recycled or used as fuel, and the holder is retained for the next few years.
I’ve never seen anything like that. The few times I’ve purchased coffee, it was in a cardboard cup with an extra wrap for insulation where you pick it up.
I like the renewable tea (chai) cups used in many parts of India. They are unglazed clay. When done, you just dump it on the ground in heaps. Daily, these heaps are collected, water added, remade into cups and fired.
Try that on ‘the latte set’. True renewables.
Better yet, recycle the “latte set”. Maybe turn them into something useful.
I never realised what a serious issue coffee cups are. I thought lack of clean drinking water, malaria caused by the banning of DDT, lack of electricity and similar issues faced by way too many people on this planet were important.
Now I realise its global warming and coffee cups.
Deposits on cups?
A source of income for kids and the homeless. (And junkies?)
What could possibly go wrong?
Every waste bin empty, and surrounded by scattered rubbish!
Do you imagine that every deposit hunter will put it all back after they’ve searched?
A sign, “No deposit items are left in this bin overnight”, perhaps?
Yeah, right.
Here in the US, it is now “mandatory” that every plastic cup in every hotel room (plastic foam or paper coffee cup style and the even lighter plastic drinking cup style) be enclosed in its own disposable plastic envelope.
Now, not every hotel and motel room in every state is occupied every night, and not every coffee cup and drinking cup in every room is used every night. But some bureaucrat and his/her/its lawyer and his/her/its supervisor is certainly he/she/it too has contributed to the global “health” of every hotel user in the US every night by demanding every cup be thrown away, its individual plastic envelope is thrown away, and all of that excess plastic (er, fossil fuel) is used to make the plastic cups, their plastic envelopes, their fabrication and wrapping fee, their shipping and storage fees, their unwrapping and disposal fee, and the excess garbage disposal costs ….
26 million excess cups and wrappers per day thrown away?
“The government agrees plastic waste is a problem and will seek evidence on a tax on single-use plastics.” Of course, government officials will always agree with anything they think will give them an excuse for imposing new taxes, which they will waste on ensuring they get re-elected.
but, but, but when we leave the EU and assert immigration controls there will be no one to sell us coffee anyway.
Here in Guadalajara, at least, SB offers the option of having your drink in a real, washable mug, and reduces the price by M$7, about US30 cents. Why not?
When I was a young PFC in the military I was assigned to make coffee for the Company office each morning. One day I took it upon myself to clean the Company Gunnery Sergeant’s coffee mug. The inside was coated with a thick black coffee residue and it took me quite a while to get it sparkling clean. The Gunny flipped a lid telling me it took him over 15 years to get the mug that way and make the coffee taste just how he wanted it. Now he had to start all over. And yes, I got a lot of shit details assigned to me after that.
What about the high-school kid from Waterloo Ontario that fermented plastic about 10 years ago?
Short sighted. Everyone likes or doesn’t like something. But then politicians love controlling money . . . and people.
I heard a story yesterday that at one coffee shop a customer took in their own reusable cup. The bartista made the required coffee in the usual disposable plastic cup then tipped it into the reusable plastic cup and threw away the disposable cup.
On a more serious note, many public waste bins in the UK were removed because the IRA (Irish Republican Army for those allergic to TLA’s) had a habit of putting bombs in them. Many have now been replaced with hanging transparent plastic bags but they are not as common as once.
Just burn the waste in power stations would be the practical solution. One day i imagine they will start to opencast mine landfill sites for fuel.
The Chinese already do it, near Peking.
I can’t find it at the moment but I remember that there was an analysis that showed that using a disposable plastic cup consumed less natural resources than using a ceramic mug and then washing and drying it.
Penn and Teller?
It appears to me that the collection of rubbish around the dedicated bin means that the depositers had looked for somewhere to dump their trash but had failed to find a trash bin. One item starts the ball rolling.
Answer, more trash bins
Just a brief note – Under EU rules incineration is classified and “Thermal Recycling”.
And strictly forbidden as a free choice. You may only do it once all other forms of recycling have failed. This means it is really diffcult to burn anything even in new clean and efficient facilities.
Why is it sustainable and politically correct to:
1. Cut down trees
2. Shred them
3. Burn them in a powerplant
4. Produce electricity
But not to:
1. Cut down trees
2. Shred them
4. Turn them into latte cups
5. Use the cups
6. Burn them in a powerplant
7. Produce electricity
A good question that idiot MPs can’t work out.
“TinyCO2 January 7, 2018 at 2:40 am
A good question that idiot MPs can’t work out.”
A good question that idiot can’t work out. Fixed!
Or that the MPs WON’T work out. No more money if you fix a problem.
+1
At 25 p per cup you replace them by good old-fashoined crockery and can employ someone at minimum wage to do the washing up.
True. Green ‘economy’ in action.
Sorry, but that’s not sustainable. It takes far too much water and washing-up liquid and fuel to heat the water and energy to clean the waste water and all that. The Dreamy Greenies just don’t understand that thermal recycling is the immediate solution.
Given that many (or maybe all) of the large coffee shop companies are avoiding paying the proper taxes in the UK by legitimate fiddles, I favour massive taxes on disposable coffee cups. Maybe there could be a lower tax on companies with less than 50 employees.
But I’m fine with those cups being ‘recycled’ in an energy making incinerator.
So what really is going on here…
1. Similar to plastic carrier bags, previously given free from supermarkets, our elders/betters have convinced themselves that the country is being buried by these things. As my main hobby (only remaining vice) is simply driving to new different places all around England, I can tell that that was patently untrue. The UK was not under a deluge of these discarded sacks.
This is patently= Magical Thinking, as practised by the chronically depressed.
2. Our leaders have previously stipulated that any plastic which comes into any contact with any ‘foodstuff’ must, under thereat of fine/prison, be Brand New Virgin Plastic.
Totally NO RECYCLING allowed there.
3. They are patently irritated by folks drinking coffee. It bothers them. Ans what sort of folks are easily irritated? Not sufferers of Kwashkior by any chance? And not in any way similar to the irritation they suffer from folks keeping their houses warm, from eating meat, from making their food tasty with salt etc etc etc
4. Recycling again. In pubs, when I used to drink, one could return to the bar with your empty glass and bar-staff would re-fill it. Save on the washing up etc.
To do so now is a capital offence. Cross Contamination you see?
Similarly, free water fountains & glasses at the end of the bar have disappeared. Infection Risk innit?
5. At one establishment I visited, Winter Storm Norman the 97th was howling through the outdoor patio area and blowing open the large double doors leading to it. Man was it cold.
I ventured to put the latch on one of the doors and that solved the problem of both blowing open and letting all the heat out.
No. The manager saw me and as fast as he could, came and unlocked the door while delivering the admonishment: “Fire Door you see. Must be open at all times”
I visit the boys room at same establishment. At far end is a door with a push-button combination lock on it. Also 2 notices – “Fire Door” and “Must Be Locked At All Times”
(Exactly *who* is losing their sanity at this point?)
6. Finally and not least 2 related points.
6.1 If they were *really serious about this ‘problem’, why stop at 25 pence per cup. If an end is needed to this ‘pollution’, why not £25 per cup. That would stop the problem in it tracks.
6.2 Where the revenue goes. A very recent interweb story I saw was comparing the costs of refurbishing various famous landmarks around the world. Taj Mahal, Tower of Pisa, this temple, that carved sandstone city etc. Some were getting into 100’s of million of ££££ refurbishment costs.
Until the UK Houses of Parliament.
Three point five billion pounds. £3,500, 000,000.
Goof grief. The Eurocrats just helped themselves to £320 million for a brand new parliament building. Everyone was horrified at that yet these self centred muppets are going for 11 times as much. And it will invariably double within hours of work actually starting. Just as these things always do.
My actual point (6) is that the are being ‘less than truthful’
In normal circumstance, that destroys any amount of trust that exists between the parties.
So, a silly question really, what else are they being ‘less than honest about’?
And doncha love what they doing at the Palace of Westminster.
Its main problems are, seemingly and as reported by Auntie Beeb
1, the heating system isn’t up to scratch. What. In these days of global warming and what about the centuries worth of forebears that have been through the place? How did they cope?
2. It is getting damp.
Good grief, its on the bank of a huge river.
They really are doing a King Canute on this one yet have convinced themselves that by throwing enough money at ‘the problem’, it will be solved. They really do think they can ‘stop the tide’
Is Knut laughing or crying right now?
I could have invented a whole new phrase there – ‘Goof Grief’
Defn: The expression of amazement when someone does something truly dumb, even by their own usual standards of ‘goofiness’
Charley Brown was ahead of his time.
I agree wholeheartedly about the daftness of our rules and how everyone interprets them in different ways but I can understand why the refurbishment of the Houses of parliament would be more expensive than a new building or refurbishing an old building without the demands on Westminster. The heritage demands in the UK would be far higher than most countries. Labour costs to repair historic features would be meteoric. Extracting old safety and fire systems, wiring, plumbing etc and then putting them back in to last another 50-100 years will be eye watering. They’ll probably build undernearth too. Add the reluctance of the MPs to move out…
The sensible option would be to move them out altogether and build a brand new parliament building complex, with apartments for MPs and all the things necessary for security. But MPs would never give up their London life.
But MPs would never give up their London lucrative perks/expenses/sk ams.
Fixed.
SteveT
Tiny, Steve,
A simple solution is to give Ullapool (which has a golf course – and a ferry to Stornoway!) a Central Postcode – say WC5 – but for a limited period – say five years.
That will ensure that our honourable (and noble) members are still co-located in ‘London’, whilst having an incentive to ensure the job is done on time [and – with a twist such as guaranteeing that ten or fifteen percent of any savings against the budget are distributed to members and peers – on or below budget].
If their expenses for returning to their constituencies [or simple attendance for the peers] are kept at previous levels [when based in London proper] the taxpayer might come out a few bob ahead. Nice.
Better – we might get shot of some of the most self-serving souls in – or seeking election to – Parliament; a win-win situation if it comes to pass . . .
Auto
PS – no fee requested for this solution.
I have just come back from New Guinea, driving around you can see some of the rivers around Port Moresby used as rubbish dumps. I did not realise it was us brits and our coffee cups that were responsible.
Brain dead MPs all they can think to do to alleviate the problem is raise another tax.
Recycling coffee paper cups is a nutty idea.
Make windmills, few dozens or even hundreds, if you are ardent paper cup drinker, stick them to your roof tiles and hey presto, free renewable electricity. If you are really enterprising you might get government subsidy for such environmentally and politically correct project.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C9_lq7WGZCI/UnFPqjSDZEI/AAAAAAAADSU/_0-KV72EOKo/s1600/anemometre.png
Love the windmill design! 🙂
One of the benefits from this kind of windmill is it won’t kill any birds. The birds will just knock them over and go on about their business.
Non-life-threatening windmills are a *good* thing.
Life threatening windmills are a VERY BAD thing.
The picture has no coffee cups at all, so zero net effect on litter.
The solution is to increase the bin size, the number of bins, and the collection timetable.
I noticed that too. The picture looks staged.
Probably not staged. The bin only takes news papers and magazines. So if you have something else, you throw it at the foot of the bin, because you’re not allowed to put it in the bin.
The English have heavy fines for putting the wrong rubbish in the bins.
Since the problem is clearly a lifestyle issue, it’s not going to be resolved by taxation or similar. Taking a cue from cigarette packaging, I’ve written to my MP suggesting all disposable cups should carry prominent health warnings, eg Stop! Think! Buying this drink can seriously damage your environment, plus suitable photos of choked rivers etc,
Good to know Britain has solved all its problems and can now concentrate on coffee cups.