Hugh’s War on Waste: The Battle Continues review – taking the lid off the coffee cup scandal

I had no idea. Like these other early morning caffeine enthusiasts Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is accosting in the street in Hugh’s War on Waste: The Battle Continues (BBC1). What will they do when they finish their takeaway coffee from Starbucks, Costa, Caffe Nero? They’ll put the cup in the recycling, because these people are aware and responsible and cardboard is recyclable, right? Except when it’s a coffee cup that has been treated with something called polyacetylene, making it coffee-proof but also very hard to recycle.

Still, isn’t that a recyclable arrow symbol? Yes, but it’s on the cardboard sleeve that stops you burning your fingers and it refers to just that, not the cup too, as you might think. That’s extra-evil isn’t it, because of the deception? You thought they were OK, and they really aren’t. Then there’s the fact that the cups can’t even be made from recycled paper in the first place, it has to be virgin tree. It wouldn’t be much worse if takeaway coffee cups were whittled from the horns of black rhinos. And we throw away 2.5bn of them in this country every year. BOOO!

But now Fearnley-Wearnley’s on to it. Dear Starbucks, Dear Costa, Dear Caffe Nero … Ha! There can’t be many people a big corporation wants to hear from less than Hugh. Because they’ll know there’s bad publicity and an electronic salvo to follow and they might have to actually do something about it, like the supermarkets did with the wonky veg last time round.

Another battle Hugh is winning is how to make it work on television. It’s a big challenge for stuff like this – you know it’s terrible, and dead important, but it is about coffee cups and packaging as well as being a bit depressing … maybe you’ll just watch Celebrity Big Brother instead. So a lot of imagination and work needs to go – and has gone – into making this engaging. It’s not just about facts and standing outside Starbucks shouting BOOO. It’s about finding interesting people like Mark the packaging expert (no really, he is interesting) and Martin the south London cup inventor. It’s about stunts – like this double-decker cup bus designed by art students (good slogan too: “Wake Up and Smell The Waste” works on all levels and decks). It’s about getting You and Hugh’s army involved. C’mon now everyone, get Twittering, Dear @StarbucksUK, @CostaCoffee, @CaffeNero_US …

As for Hugh, well he’s entertainingly sarcastic at times (is the reason Costa won’t give him an interview “because they don’t think the world wants to hear about their fantastic new recyclable cup?”). But also journalistic and fair. Remember when he used to be just another celebrity chef? Now he’s done the fish, and the ugly parsnips, and taken the lid off the big coffee cup scandal. Maybe it’s time he got going on the big one: climate change. Dear The World …

There are lots of lovely quotes from the main man in Roger Bannister: Everest on the Track (BBC4). I especially like this, on his childhood: “I had a bicycle when I was about 13 and I would ride from Bath to London to visit my friends, which is about 110 miles or something.” That would be about seven hours 20 minutes, if he cycled at the same speed over 110 miles aged 13 as he would later run over one mile aged 25, if you see what I mean. Imagine it today, from a 13-year-old in Bath: “Seeyer mum, just off up to London on my bike.”

You know exactly where this film is going, but it doesn’t make it any less exciting when it gets there. Very little is more stirring than momentous sporting achievement, and running is so beautiful and primal. Plus Sir Roger is such a thoroughly decent chap. Imagine what he might have run if he’d had a decent track to run on; or if he hadn’t been to work that morning; or if he hadn’t been brought up on a wartime diet; or if he had used modern scientific training techniques (as opposed to very long childhood bicycle rides), or had access to some decent Russian drugs.

It’s tied in with other stuff going on at the time, in 1953, like a glamorous new queen on the throne and the first ascent of Everest. I know, by a New Zealander and a Nepalese man, but the expedition was British. Anyway, it all gave the country a lift. I think we could do with some of that now.