Waitrose, KPMG and EU Commission all move to phase out plastics use

Waitrose, KPMG and the Vice President of the European Commission in Brussels have all announced their intentions to reduce their use of plastics this week.

Supermarket chain, Waitrose, told customers that from Autumn this year it will no longer supply disposable coffee cups for its hot drinks either to take away or for consumption in its cafes.

The retailer said that it will continue to offer hot drinks to its customers, however, they must bring or buy a reusable container from which to consume their beverage.

Tor Harris, Head of Sustainability and Responsible Sourcing at Waitrose, said: “We realise this is a major change, but we believe removing all takeaway disposable cups is the right thing to do for our business and are confident the majority of customers will support the environmental benefits. It underlines our commitment to plastic and packaging reduction and our aim is to deliver this as quickly as possible.”

Waitrose recently pledged to not sell any own label food in black plastic beyond 2019. It has also committed to make all own-label packaging widely recyclable (using the widely recycled logo), reusable, or home compostable by 2025.

KPMG removes cups and cutlery

For KPMG, a global audit, tax and advisory firm, its pledge to reduce its use of plastics will see it stop using disposable plastic recepticles in all of its 22 UK offices by the end of the summer.

This, it says, follows the successful removal of plastic cups in a trial within its Manchester office and the move to country-wide expansion is expected to save some three million cups every year.

Instead of plastics, the firm has offered all employees a metal refillable container and has made paper cups available for its water fountains.

The removal of plastic cups is part of KPMG’s 'Waste in our Time' programme, which will see the firm reduce its waste and increase recycling in a number of ways through 2018.

KPMG’s Environment Manager, Sarah Lindsay, said: “As well as removal of plastic cups for water, saving three million cups across our UK offices, we will also phase out the use of plastic cups from our hot drink vending machines by August 2018, saving another three million cups per year.

“We are looking at two possible options to replace these, either a paper cup or a compostable cup, and these will be implemented on a site-by-site basis depending on the waste facilities available in the area.”

She added: “We have already removed the use of plastic straws from our offices and we have also saved over a quarter of a million items of plastic cutlery this year by removing them from some of our smaller offices. We will be doing the same across the entire firm by the end of the year.”

“No more plastic bottles”

Finally, the EU Commission’s Vice President, Frans Timmermans, announced via Twitter this week that there will be “no more plastic bottles” in meetings held in Brussels, with an accompanying image of glass water bottles within the EU Commission chambers.

Timmermans has previously said that Brussels’ priority was the to clamp down on “single use plastics”. In tweet announcing the end of the use of plastic water bottles in meetings, he encouraged others to “do the same”.