The tortuous, one consultation, one item at a time, approach being used by Defra and UK Government might be great at grabbing headlines but it really isn’t going to address the challenge either in terms of ambition or in terms of the speed of response needed. In this CMS News the National Trust and Southern Water are adopting a more comprehensive response to all the single use plastics (SUPs) they use. More of this kind of policy approach will accelerate the process no end.

National Trust: We’re committed to creating and maintaining a healthy and more beautiful natural environment.

We recognise that using single use plastic, with its damaging effect on nature and the environment, is at odds with this pledge, so we’re phasing them out at our places over the coming years. Disposable plastics such as bottles, food packaging, cups and cutlery are a particular concern, causing problems for nature and wildlife during their manufacture and after use.  Matt Drew, our Head of Food and Beverage said: “As a charity that looks after 775 miles of coastline, we’re alarmed by the impact single use plastics have on our environment, our oceans and marine wildlife.’

‘We’re committed to eliminating the use of single use plastic in our cafés and tea rooms, whilst ensuring that any disposable packaging we do use has as little impact on the environment as possible”. We’re also taking similar steps across the whole organisation to remove single use plastics, and to minimise waste in general. 

So far, we’ve…

• Replaced all of our take-away coffee cups, drinking straws and sandwich boxes with fully biodegradable packaging, made from recycled and plant-based materials.
• Launched a pilot scheme to make reusable and biodegradable hot drinks cups available at all of our cafés.
• Provided free drinking water as standard in our cafés and tea rooms.
• Removed single use plastic bags from our shops and replaced them with recycled alternatives, designed for a long life-span and multiple re-use. We also sell jute and fabric re-usable bags.
•  Switched the wrapping on our members’ magazine from plastic to a potato starch wrap that can be composted at home.
• Moved to reusable plant pots and trays in our nurseries. 

In the future, we’re committed to…

• Ensuring our shops are free of single use plastic by 2022.
• Removing all single use plastic bottles in our cafés by 2022. For all our sit-down cafés, we’ll swap to glass bottles by the end of 2018.
• Investigating the alternatives for single use plastics in our plant nurseries and plant sales areas.
• Publishing our waste strategy by July 2018, which will set out how we intend to minimise waste at our places.

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