The UK’s first lidless & plastic-free cup launched at WWT

Every minute in the UK Britons throw away 5000 disposable coffee cups. That’s a mountain of waste. And only 1 in 400 of them are recycled.

The British chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall challenged the major coffee chains to switch to a “properly recyclable” cup to solve the “takeout trash mountain” that’s building up at an alarming rate.

This prompted ButterflyCup founder Tommy McLoughlin to attempt to solve this problem with “the world’s most environmentally friendly disposable cup.” He hopes it will “lift the lid on the eco disaster” posed by coffee cup plastic waste, and today it’s being unveiled at WWT (Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust) centres across the UK. It’s Britain’s first fully plastic-free and recyclable-lid-free takeaway cup.

The ButterflyCup can be recycled in the regular paper bin along with cardboard and ordinary paper, biodegrades naturally and can be composted.

Tommy McLoughlin, Founder and CEO of ButterflyCup said: “We are thrilled to be launching in the UK with WWT, an organisation whose ethos of protecting the natural world we share.

“It is a travesty that of the billions of coffee cups the UK uses each year, so few get recycled. We created ButterflyCup to lift the lid on this eco disaster and help solve it. We believe it is the world’s most environmentally friendly disposable cup, and we hope more coffee outlets across the UK give their customers the option of using it in the near future.”

Head of Sustainability at WWT, Lucy Smith said: “We are delighted to be using ButterflyCup across all our wetland sites. We have had brilliant feedback from staff and visitors when we trialled it at one of our centres. 

“The product offers a simple but brilliant solution to part of the plastic waste crisis.”

This is a great looking product. Let’s see how the customers like it.

Here’s a quick video overview of the ButterflyCup. What do you think?