A TAKEAWAY champion is ditching disposable packaging and hoping to take the whole of Oxfordshire with him.

Dom Stanway-Williams, who appeared in this paper last year when he nominated his local kebab van for the British Kebab Awards (which it won at), has launched his own Oxfordshire reusable takeaway coffee cup.

The cups are already being sold by Café Loco in St Aldate's, but with the furore over plastic packaging pollution which followed David Attenborough’s latest Blue Planet series, Mr Stanway-Williams is hoping coffeeshops across the county will put his mug in their windows.

The 27-year-old from Thame said: “Like everyone, I find it frustrating that environmental change is clearly going on but as an individual it feels like there is so little that can be done.

“This cup is something everyone can step up and engage with and it’s a relatively convenient move to make.

“It’s dishwasher safe and you can keep it in your car at all times they’ve got a lock lid so they’re something everyone can carry around.

“It is a small change that can make a big difference.”

As well as helping cut waste, profits from the £7 mugs will go to the Wild Oxfordshire conservation network.

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The group’s community ecologist Roselle Chapman said: “This is a great initiative that can help anyone reduce the amount of rubbish and plastic that enters Oxfordshire’s ecosystem.

“When you look around at this time of year where there are no leaves on the branches, practically every hedgerow in Oxfordshire is full of cups and rubbish.

“Hopefully’s Dom’s mugs will make people stop and think: it’s all about that little moment in time when someone thinks ‘I don’t have to have this disposable mug – I could have something reusable’.”

She also said Wild Oxfordshire was ‘hugely’ grateful for the donations from the mug sales.

In the UK, 2.5 billion disposable cups are thrown away each year, of which less than 0.25 per cent are recycled, according to the government’s Environmental Audit Committee.

The majority of disposable coffee cups cannot be recycled by the normal systems because they are made from cardboard with a tightly-bonded polyethylene liner which is difficult to remove, and means they are not accepted by paper mills.

Following the introduction of the 5p plastic bag charge in supermarkets and dozens of pubs and restaurants banning plastic straws, MPs are now debating whether to introduce a mandatory 25p charge on single-use takeaway cups.

Oxford City Council recently debated getting rid of all single-use plastics in its buildings while Cherwell District Council is reviewing its use of plastics.

Café Loco owner Graham Wellstead said he, like many, had been awakened to the issue of plastic pollution by Blue Planet.

He went on: “For us, this is long overdue.

“We need to move forward as quickly as we can do deal with plastic packaging.

“Hopefully people will join the cause and we’ll get as many people on board as possible.”

The mugs have been sponsored by the Buckinghamshire coffee company Mr Stanway-Williams works for, Bean Bags Coffee.

A campaign website – keepitgreenuk.org – will track the number of mugs sold and the waste saved from landfill.

He added: “Hopefully we will see these mugs in everyone’s hands in Oxfordshire and it can drive all sorts of change.”