In addition to that, 4.25 billion single use pieces of cutlery — the vast majority of which are plastic — are also used. disposable coffee cups have been a long standing problem — the uk throws away two and half billion of those every year. rob opsomer is from the ellen macarthur foundation, which aims to promote what it calls a 'circular�* economy. he explained how it works. so what we mean by circular economy, the easiest way to explain it is we look at our current economic model works. and how that works is we take resources out of the ground and we make products and we throw them a...