LONDON — The humble paper coffee cup, that mainstay of mornings and modern office life, may be going the way of the pull-tab soda can and, perhaps, plastic bags and bottles. The problem, it seems, is that, in their current form, the cups are surprisingly hard to recycle, and therefore contribute an excessive amount to waste streams.

On Friday, a parliamentary committee in Britain issued a report recommending a hefty tax of 25 pence, or 34 cents, for every cup sold. Dubbed the “latte levy,” the fee would amount to around 10 percent on every cup of coffee sold, presumably a painful enough charge to induce most people to carry around their own reusable cups.

Disposable cups are often laminated with plastic or polyethylene to make them waterproof. But traditional paper mills and recycling facilities are not equipped for the complex process of stripping the plastic away. Instead, the containers end up in landfills or are burned in incinerators, a concern for environmentalists who say that toxins can seep into the ground or escape into the air.

In Britain alone, 2.5 billion cups are discarded each year, enough to circle the planet five and a half times, according to the parliamentary report. That number could expand to five billion cups a year in seven years’ time as the explosive growth of cafe culture in the country shows few signs of abating.