Wetherspoons has become the first large business to stop using receipts after customers complained of mess and the waste of paper. Customers can still request them but will not be given them as a matter of course.

British retailers hand out 11.2 billion receipts - 7,300 tonnes - every year at a cost of £32m. Most end up in landfill because they cannot be recycled.

Shops are gradually reducing their use of paper. Clothes stores including Topshop, Urban Outfitters, Gap, Clarks, New Look, Mothercare and motoring store Halfords have all begun offering e-receipts at an alternative in recent years.

Many shopping receipts also cannot be recycled because they are printed on shiny paper and contain other substances.

In the chain's latest magazine, one wrote in, asking Tim Martin where they had gone. Stephen Simpson, of Keighley, West Yorks, said: "I am wondering why you have stopped issuing receipts for meals at your pubs.

"Twice now, I have ordered meals with side orders as extras; both times the side orders never arrived, leaving me wondering whether I had ordered them in the first place.

"With a receipt I would be able to see exactly what I ordered and show the staff exactly what may be missing."