In a bid to reduce pollution in the UK, Heathrow has announced it will recycle all disposable coffee cups that are sold and discarded by the end of the year.

It will also encourage passengers to carry their own reusable cups, and will require all food and beverage retailers and lounge operators to use a standardized paper cup that can be collected and recycled.

Currently, the airport does not allow single use cups at its head office and is looking forward to banning the use of single use plastics like bottles, straws and stirrers from the airport.

The trial run of the re-usable system at the head office, helped to avoid usage of more than 250,000 disposable cups. The airport estimates that once the project is fully rolled out, it will avoid sending more than 13.5 million cups to landfill.

The airport, which receives around 78million passengers per year, is seeking to phase out single use plastic cups in all five of its terminals.

Heathrow’s chief executive John Holland-Kaye said: “As a small city, we are committed to reducing our impact on the environment and using all our influence to ensure individual companies working within our boundaries do so as well. This announcement takes us one-step further, ensuring all single-use coffee cups at the airport are able to be recycled with additional support from Heathrow. 

“For businesses, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee – join us in banning single-use coffee cups in your office today so that we can make a difference to tomorrow.”

More than 13billion plastic drink bottles are used in the UK every year and of this, more than 3billion end up incinerated, sent to landfill or are left to pollute the streets and ocean.

By Airport Pickups London