Pret and Paul to offer discounts to customers with their own re-usable cup

The ‘Paul Cares’ policy, described by chief executive of Paul UK, Jean-Michel Orieux, as a means of ‘lightening the environmental footprint’ of customers, from Monday will provide a 10p discount for every re-usable cup used at any of its 35 UK outlets. ‘Paul’ branded cups will also be on sale in stores for £3.50 to encourage the re-use of cups.

Pret will be instigating a trial of a 25p discount for customers who bring their own re-usable coffee cup to the store, and the trial will last for a month, beginning the same day as the discount at Paul.

The decision to give discounts to customers who arrive with their own reusable coffee cups has been made in response to pressure from environmental groups, who aim to reduce the excessive amount of cardboard waste generated in the UK each year. Britain’s coffee mania is thought to produce approximately 25,000 tonnes of waste, and it is estimated that the UK uses 2.5 billion disposable cups per year.

A study in March from Cardiff University, carried out by the coffee roaster Bewley’s, claimed that by putting a charge on every disposable cup used in the UK, the number of cups thrown away could be cut by up to 300 million per year. Most cups cannot be recycled due to the use of polyethylene during production, and consequently re-usable cups are one of the the many solutions being looked into by the coffee industry in its search for a more eco-friendly system.