London City Airport bans plastic straws

London City Airport has announced its plan to phase out plastic straws across all its food and drink outlets becoming the first UK airport to adopt such a measure.

The new measure will see all bars, restaurants and coffee shops removing plastic straws and replacing them with biodegradable paper straws which will be provided to customers upon request.

The decision came in support of London Evening Standard’s ‘The Last Straw’ campaign, urging Londoners to ditch plastic straws and put pressure on the city’s bars and restaurants to sign up the campaign and pledge for a plastic straw-free future in hospitality.

Lewis Chenery, Environmental Compliance Executive at London City Airport, said: “We are pleased to see plastic straws depart from London City Airport, joining a range of waste management initiatives that we already implement as a zero-landfill company”.

“Recent public interest in plastic waste has brought into sharp focus the issue, and we will be looking at new measures to further reduce our contribution, as we develop a new guide for our restaurants and retailers”, he added.

According to recent figures, the London City Airport’s outlets distribute roughly 100,000 plastic straws each year to approximately 4.5 million passengers.

The SSP Group, which is responsible for the operations of the multiple hospitality spots in the airport, will have to ensure that the bars, coffee shops and restaurants operating under its umbrella only use alternative kind of straws.

To date, Café-bar Brick Lane Brews, Café Nero and Pret A Manger have already removed plastic straws from their shops.

The airport has also committed to increasing its recycling rate to 70 percent by the end of 2018. In addition, as part of its strategy to reduce plastic waste, it provides free drinking water refill stations to discourage passengers from purchasing single-use plastic water bottles.

To this end, it also offers self-service jugs of water and has made it mandatory for all food and drink outlets to offer passengers tap water for free without making them buying something.