Hastings Fat Tuesday will be the first multi venue festival in the UK to become single use plastic cup free.
As a coastal town we have a responsibility to save our oceans and to stop swamping landfill with endless quantities of plastic cups. The uk produces 400 million tons of plastic every year and 40% of that plastic will only be used once before it is binned. Carrier bags, drinks bottles, crisp packets and of course, events cups are prime examples of single use plastics.
A desire to see an end to all this waste has driven 247 taxis to join forces with Fat Tuesday and Plastic Free Hastings. Stew Smith from 247 taxis says “247 are delighted to be working with the Fat Tuesday team bringing a vision of reusable plastic glasses to a major event in Hastings. Whilst we are looking at this year as a trial, we would hope that between ourselves and other local companies we can build on the foundations for many years and promote events in Hastings as the leaders in reducing event plastic waste. Help support our vision by grabbing yourself a pint glass during the Fat Tuesday.”
Fat Tuesday have designed a cool collectable re-usable cup to commemorate its 10th anniversary in an effort to reduce its negative environmental impact. These cups can be purchased from all the participating bars at £2 per cup. You can then use this cup in all the bars as you tour around watching all the fantastic free music around town. Once the festival is over you can take your cup home, use it again at other events or take it to the beach, for picnics etc…
In addition to the re-usable cups all the participating pubs will be using compostable plastic cups as back up. These are not ideal as we don’t have an industrial compost site in the South East of England. This means that the compostable cups will be incinerated but won’t release a noxious gas as other plastics do.
This is just the start, we would like to see all other Hastings events and festivals use this same model in order to really reduce our single use plastics. Eventually we would like to see reusable cups used all year round in all our pubs.
The full Hastings Fat Tuesday 2019 programme will be announced soon. For all the latest news and updates visit hastingsfattuesday.co.uk