Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the Government will make it its policy to ban the use of single-use plastic coffee cups in Government buildings.

The Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan, published in January this year, includes a commitment to remove all single-use consumer plastics from central Government offices. This commitment will be delivered and reported under the sustainable procurement reporting section of the Greening Government Commitments.

A number of Departments, including Defra, are already taking steps to eliminate single-use consumer plastics from their operations. Plastic drinking cups have been removed from Defra-run offices and replaced by glasses, and plastic coffee cups are soon to be banned from office catering outlets. The Department is currently tendering for a new catering contract which will prohibit single-use plastics from this summer.