Buy lunch with your recyclable waste at London’s ‘rubbish cafe’

A pop-up ‘rubbish café’ has opened this week in Covent Garden, London, which accepts recyclable plastic as currency to buy lunch or coffee.

The cafe has been opened by cleaning brand Ecover, and the zero-waste menu has been designed by ‘eco-chef’ Tom Hunt with the venue fitted with an upcycled décor by eco-designer Max McMurdo, who was interviewed in Environment Journal last year.

The two-day pop-up finishes today (May 4th) and hopes to ‘serve up inspiration and ideas for simple swaps we can all make to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic.’

They say their vegetarian and vegan bowl food options are served on a first come, first serve basis so nothing goes to waste.

On their first day, over 400 people came to the cafe and they collected 22 bags of recyclable plastic waste.

Tom Domen, global innovation lead at Ecover said: ‘We’ve been fighting for a greener clean at Ecover for the past 40 years. We believe that single-use, throwaway plastic culture has had its day. So, we’ve given our plastic packaging a serious rethink. Our new washing-up liquid bottle is 100% recycled and 100% recyclable – with a commitment that all our bottles will go this way by 2020.

‘The Rubbish Café is part of our Clean World Revolution to show the public the incredible value of putting plastics back into the recycling system to help close the loop on plastic production, minimising the amount of new plastic that is created. So besides serving up fantastic sustainable food at The Rubbish Cafe, we’ll be revealing small steps we can all make to benefit our environment so more can pledge to #LiveClean’

By the year 2020, Ecover is aiming for all of their plastic packagings to be 100% post-consumer recycled and 100% recyclable plastic. Currently, they are trialling the use of an alternative packaging, which doesn’t rely on plastic and is biodegradable and bio-sourced.

The rubbish cafe is open today until 4pm at 25 Long Acre, Covent Garden, WC2E 9JT.