Simply Cups, the UK’s only paper cup recycling scheme, has partnered with a company that claims to have made a takeaway cup that is recyclable at traditional paper mills.

The Resource Association has called on government to recognise the importance of high-quality recycling collection as it considers new business packaging recycling targets.

Tesco and Sainsbury’s, two of the UK’s largest supermarkets, have pledged to ban plastic cotton buds and will replace plastic stems with paper in their own brand products by the end of 2017.

Costa Coffee is launching a nationwide recycling scheme to recover and recycle more of its takeaway cups, but only those that have been left in stores.

The German city of Freiburg is pioneering the new ‘Freiburg Cup’, a reusable coffee cup, to reduce single-use takeaway waste.

Industry groups have both supported and criticised Waste Minister Therese Coffey’s move to reject a proposal by the Liberal Democrats to bring in a 5p charge on disposable coffee cups to reduce waste.

Celebrity chef and waste campaigner Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has accused brands of ‘greenwashing’ responses to the burning issue of coffee cup waste, criticising in particular a campaign to increase high street recycling of takeaway cups.

A 32-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after a worker died at a Birmingham recycling site last week.

A new social experiment in Manchester is to test a series of bins to see if the collection of coffee cups could be effectively recycled into new products.

A new set of guidelines on recycling is hoping to clear up once and for all what materials can and can’t be recycled at the kerbside in an attempt to remove the confusion holding back recycling the UK.