Reusable cups set to slash Bonfire plastic waste

Following a successful pilot last year, reusable plastic cups will again be available at pubs across Lewes in a bid to slash the plastic waste generated during Bonfire next month. Or you can even bring your own cup! Town Councillor Nick Tigg explains how everyone can help cut the plastic on 5 November.

Lewes’s infamous Bonfire celebrations will soon be upon us in all their noisy, crazy glory – and this year, as last, the Town Council are supporting pubs to reduce their use of plastic.

Pubs in the town aren’t allowed to use pint glasses on the night, for obvious reasons, so they’ve tended to buy single-use disposable plastic ones. The obvious problem with this is that on an average bonfire night there are anywhere between 20,000 and 40,000 folk in the town. If each of them has 3 or 4 pints (an underestimation, no doubt, in many cases), that’s 80,000 plastic glasses just going in the bin after one outing. And that’s just for one night!

That’s a hell of a lot of fossil fuels to waste on a disposable object. Last year, Green United, an organisation that invites young people in Lewes to propose environmental actions they want to see in the town, asked what the group would like to happen at Bonfire. The overwhelming response was to reduce its use of plastic.

To make this happen in Lewes, the Town Council last year organised and funded ‘Town Cups’, a recyclable pint cup made in the UK, branded with a picture of Lewes and the message ‘Refill not Landfill’, distributing them to pubs across town. It was a big success, with single-use plastic considerably reduced, and this year we’ll be doing the same. Most festivals and large events around the country, from Glastonbury to Jack In The Green, now only allow reusable plastic cups, which have a much longer life than single use, so this is a scheme that’s familiar to everyone.

In fact, the scheme worked so well in Lewes last Bonfire that a lot of other events in the town have taken it up. The Town Council is now supplying these reusable cups to Lewes Football Club and events like Priory by Candlelight and the Battle of Lewes celebrations. And unlike single-use ones, these Town Cups don’t cost organisers anything.

Bring your own cup!

For Bonfire this year, we’re also encouraging anyone coming to the event to do exactly what you do when you go to the supermarket these days. We all take our own bags to the shops, because single-use shopping bags are history. So if you’re coming to Bonfire, why not bring your own plastic cup? We’ve all got a few in the cupboard, and as long as they’ve got a proper, legal mark on them of pint or half pint, all the pubs will serve you. Dig out enough for any friends or family visiting too.

If you don’t have your own, you can buy a Town Cup in the pub, just like buying a bag in the supermarket. These reusable cups are built to have a really long life, with all the money going towards further plastic reduction schemes in the town. But the more we can encourage people to bring their own cups when they go out on Bonfire the better.

A Cup Amnesty

The Town Council is also organising a ‘Cup Amnesty’ in October: any reusable plastic cups with the ‘Refill not Landfill’ logo on them that you may have acquired over the year you can return to Town Hall reception throughout October and they’ll be reused for future events.

So get hunting through those cupboards – because that’s what we call a circular economy in action!