Should We Be Charged for Single-Use Cups?

Yesterday, I received an email from Green Peace asking me to sign their petition to the Chancellor to start charging a minimum 25p levy on all single-use cups. The suggestion is that the money raised by such a campaign could then be used to support environmentally-friendly projects and planet-saving initiatives.

Pilot Results

The scheme has in fact already been introduced, in the Houses of Parliament of all places, and in less than a year is said to have led to almost a 75% drop in the amount of single-use cups being used there, according to Green Peace’s website.

And I can believe it too having already seen with my own eyes the incredible success of the plastic bag charge brought in only a few years ago.

I understand that there will be naysayers out there saying that it won’t make any difference and that it’s too late, the planet is already doomed, but would it really hurt to try?

Previous Successful Schemes

We all got round the plastic bag charge by simply getting into the habit of buying longer lasting bags that could be re-used far more often and then remembering to take them with us, or pay the price and feel guilty, every time we forgot them. Many a time my husband and I have remembered to bring the bags with us as far as the boot of the car and then, suddenly, halfway round the supermarket, one of us has had to run back to the car where we’ve left them! I’m sure we’re not alone in this. But really, in the grand scheme of things, I can’t say it’s ever really registered as even a mild inconvenience. It’s now just a way of life and something we do now purely as a matter of course.

And so it could be with single-use cups. Sometimes, we just need a bit of persuasion to remember that there is another way.

So of course I signed the petition and you can too, just click the link: https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/page/s/throwaway-cup-levy and have yourself a super feel-good Friday that you’re at least trying to make the world a better place 🙂