Day 14 - Pubs and Takeaways

Day 14

Today was Saturday, I was away from home for a friends birthday and we had a night out planned in Barnsley. So obviously from the start I knew there might be a few things that would crop up over the evening, which I was partially prepared for. I went out wielding my new metal straws (not literally), and had my bottle with some water of mine in my bag for if I got thirsty on the way home (which is definitely more than likely!). So the day was going great, we went to a wetherspoons and had some food with some drinks to begin with. I was going to for a Magners cider until I realised that they've strangly changed the top of the bottle so instead of having a metal bottle cap, they've now got this absolutely pointless plastic ring pull thing on the bottles! Why!? So i avoided that entirely thank you muchly. I had mostly rum here and luckily not one of the bar tenders decided I needed a straw (which was good, as in London they seem to presume you do and stick it in your drink anyway). So then we went to a few other pubs (maybe more actually...) and everything was great until we got to the last place which was open until 4am. When we got there all the drinks came in plastic cups and I have to admit that with my inhibitions having relaxed with alcohol intake I didn't notice this for quite some time. Once I realised, I switched over to drinking bottled drinks which they handed over without the plastic cup, so that was good - i had some Hooch, which also gave me a bit more energy as it was very sugary! It made me think though of all of the disposable plastic cups they must go through unnecessarily each night. Is there an alternative to using these, other than glass of course, which i'm sure they were avoiding knowing the state of their clientele between the hours of 12am - 4am in the morning.

 I had a quick search online and found a company called VegWare that offer plastic like cups, that are cups made from plant based material, and are fully compostable!  They seem to have quite a range of disposable and compostable products that ordinarily would be made from plastic! The only downside I could see is that the plastic versions are cheaper, with 1000 9oz cups costing between £15-£30 or individually wrapped ones at £69.99; whereas the Vegcups are £57.74 for 1000 cups of the same size. In smaller denominations if anyones interested in purchasing them for a party your throwing, you can get 50 cups for £4.92, which if you think about it really isn't a great deal if you think of the damage you could prevent!

On the way home at 3am- ish, luckily everyone said no to takeaway (as I saw they were selling it in polystyrene boxes!) but we did opt for Greggs, which weirdly was open til about 4am! Crazy talk i know, but it's true I tells ya! So I bought a sausage roll, which came in a paper bag and then we were on our way back. This made me consider then, how much plastic takeaways must go through in plastic/ polystyrene containers, especially with the large boom of takeaways we've had in our area, the amount of wastage must be absolutely phenomenal! Apparently VegWare where there to save the day again and also do Takeaway boxes made out of highly pressurised sugar cane, which again is completely compostable. It's annoying you have to pay more for products like this though, because there should be some form of government backing on reducing the availability of these plastics, and we should be pushing companies to move towards these form of products. There is ABSOLUTELY no need for us to have products wrapped in plastic that we tear off two minutes after buying and throw in the bin, but yet stick around in the environment for x number of millions of years. What right do we have to do this so readily. I won't rant, It's just sickening the monumental waste that we as a species allow and find acceptable. *Fingers crossed* for a monumental change in attitude sometime in the near future, but that's definitely wishful thinking and therefore very worrying indeed.

Anyhow, that's enough doom and gloom for one day.

Until tomorrow!

Thanks for reading.