Don’t be a sucker! Giving a sip about drinking apparatus in Bristol

Is tackling plastic straws enough when venues in Bristol are using 6-10,000 single-use plastic glasses a week each?

As the Government looks to ban plastic straws nationwide, many venues in Bristol, have already taken action. You will find paper straws in Weatherspoons and TGI Fridays; reusable metal ones at Mr.Wolfs and Better Foods; and even pasta straws at Brace and Browns! And then many places like Bristol University and the Bristol Harbour Festival that have banned them all together.

A reusable metal straw available at the Better Foods Cafe, St.Werburghs.

Whilst this removes a damaging litter stream, straws make up over 60 percent of all the litter found on UK beaches, there is the disposable plastic cup. Many music venues in Bristol get through 6,000 to 10,000 each, every week! Of course, these are used for health and safety reasons, or when bars can’t keep up with the washing, in venues without washing facilities or if people are taking their drinks onto the street. So these also end up as litter, as anyone would know walking up Gloucester road on match day.

In contrast, European bars and events use reusable cups with a deposit to avoid them being dropped on the floor. In recent years, these schemes have been adopted by Bristol festivals such as Love Saves the Day, Redfest and the Comedy Gardens as well as the Brightside Cricket Ground. Venues who can wash like Mr. Wolfs and The Fleece already use reusable hard plastic cups. Whilst Trinity have just adopted a deposit scheme and Motion have trialed hiring cups from Somerset company, Green Goblet as they don’t have washing facilities on site. Motion team said that “their customers had been positive especially as they had the option to get their deposit back from the cloakroom as they were leaving”.

Trinity now serve drinks in reusable plastic cups that have a £1 deposit to prevent people dropping them.

There are local options for venues who want to join the ‘reusable revolution’ , with MATA ( contact Amy) who are planning to offer a Bristol based washing facility and for those who want to go completely plastic-free; plastic campaigns organisation, City to Sea have stainless steel cups that can be branded with a venue’s logo (contact Michelle)

Michelle with the stainless steel bar cups she would like Bristol bars to start using over plastic

Many people query the environmental impacts of harder plastic cups, but previous research shows that even with washing and transportation, a reusable plastic cup used 2.5 times has a lower environmental impact than it’s thinner plastic counterpart. And there are benefits to venues for adopting these schemes which include less littering because the cup has a value, and reduced waste management costs because they are arent disposing of thousands of cups each week which quickly fill up.

Of course this is another opportunity for Bristol businesses and their customer’s to pioneer change before legislation comes in, so talk to your local watering hole about it’s plastic drinking apparatus and the alternatives (remember if they mention bioplastics or compostables, they need to be sending them to an in-vessel composter for composting, and of course that still makes them single-use). Let’s see if the momentum of change from a city of plastic suckers continues so Bristol becomes a city of reusable sippers!

This article is part of a six month series on waste, investigating what is happening at a local and national level and where Bristol businesses and residents can get involved to make change.