On a summer morning, the Flour Pot Kitchen cafe along Brighton's seafront has a steady flow of customers – dog walkers, cyclists and even swimmers warming up after a dip. With both indoor and outdoor seating areas closed off as a precaution due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the only option is to take hot drinks away. The question is, what is the most environmentally friendly method of drinking a takeaway coffee during a global pandemic?

During the coronavirus outbreak, there was inevitably an increase in the use of disposable cups. Many cafes were reluctant to take reusable containers, or banned them, out of fear of contamination, when the cup was passed between customers and staff. But environmental campaigners say recent research has shown the reusable cup is safe to use again. 

"Over a hundred scientists have recently come forward to sign a statement to say that single-use plastic is no safer than reusables and reusables are perfectly safe for you to use, providing the café is adhering to basic health and hygiene guidance," says Jo Morley, head of campaigns at City to Sea, a Bristol-based environmental campaign group.

Larger high street coffee shops, such as Starbucks, are reviewing their ban on reusable cups. A spokesperson for the company said: "Our greatest priority is the safety of our partners and customers and for this reason we temporarily suspended the use of reusable tumblers. We have upweighted cleaning measures in place across all our stores and we are currently trialing operational procedures that will allow us to reintroduce reusables."

The Flour Pot Kitchen, part of the independent Brighton-based Flour Pot Bakery cafe chain, is accepting reusable cups again, too, offering customers a small discount as an incentive. The cafe also serves hot drinks in special paper cups, made by a company called Cup Neutral. These white cups have minimal ink, making them easier to recycle. However, they do need to be disposed of in a designated bin, so they can be collectively recycled at a special processing plant.

A firm called Paper Round, arranges the collection and recycling. "The biggest problem with coffee cup recycling is the fact that coffee cups tend to be a takeaway product," says Rory Anderson, business development manager at Paper Round. "The reason we're teaming with people like the Cup Neutral project is to create awareness and to put a very visual bin in place, so the customers can see where that waste should go."

Cafe owners using the scheme say the public does co-operate, which makes it effective. "The collaboration enables anyone across the city who buys Cup Neutral cups to recycle them at our shops, or other cafes, or anywhere else where there are bins stationed across the city," says Louise Tamadon-Nejad, who is the marketing manager at the Flour Pot Bakery. "There are 200 or so across the city and they can recycle them at any of those places."

So why are regular takeaway coffee cups so bad for the environment? "They're actually really difficult to be recycled, they can't go through a typical recycling stream, although they're made of cardboard, they're plastic-lined inside," says City to Sea's Morley. "Around half a million of them will just end up littered, we see them all the time just on beaches, or in parks. So that's a massive problem that obviously has an environmental impact and can harm wildlife."

City to Sea says that, while it welcomes recycling initiatives, there simply is not yet enough infrastructure in place to prevent large numbers of them going to waste. 

Its advice is for the public to get into the habit of using them again.