Who’s Up For Plastic Free Pints?

I’ll admit, when I first ran across this I was like “oh, goodness, these climanuts are ruining beer yet again,”, but, the environmentalist in me kinda agrees

PLASTIC-FREE PINTS ARE THE SOCIALLY DISTANCED FUTURE OF BEER

With pubs still closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Brits have been getting their beer fix with takeaway pints instead. But could this be fuelling a different kind of crisis?

The UK government has started to relax lockdown restrictions, so people have begun flocking to public spaces. To provide much-needed refreshments for those venturing to local parks or beaches, restaurants and pubs have come up with innovative ways to serve customers – while maintaining social distancing.

In order to keep things safe and sanitary for takeaway orders, single-use packaging has made a significant comeback, meaning plastic waste is filling up in parks. Environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage reported that in Brighton, UK, an influx of visitors using takeaway services had led to a build up of plastic pollution on the city’s beaches.

Why not glass bottles?

Two UK-based organisations have started a campaign called Plastic Free Pints to deal with the “massive problem of post-lockdown litter.” The project aims to encourage people to bring their own drinking vessels instead of relying on single-use plastic. They say that after the positive effects lockdown has had on the health of our planet, it’s important that we don’t slip back into pre-pandemic habits.

They have a point. You’ve seen my opinion on plastic pollution previously, and my consideration of environmental policies.

“As pubs reopened, we were seeing a lot of litter and thought, given the success of coffee KeepCups, that the solution was pretty straightforward,” says Florence Wildblood, co-founder of Ours to Save, a crowdsourced environmental news platform. Wildblood created Ours to Save during the pandemic after noticing “how people also seemed to be developing sustainable habits and taking the climate crisis more seriously in lockdown”.

Ugh. Leave the climate crisis scam out of it. Stop screwing up real issues like plastic pollution.

Also, yes, I know how bad the beer in the picture is.