London City Airport has become the first UK airport to implement a ban on plastic straws in an attempt to reduce unneeded waste.

The airport announced the major change this month, after reportedly 100,000 straws a year were used in their food and drink outlets. London City claims that they plan to replace their original plastic straws with more useful biodegradable ones.

"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," said Lewis Chenery, environmental compliance executive at London City Airport."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. We are also committed to increasing our recycling rate to 70 per cent by the end of this year."

Reducing plastic waste has always been a priority for mankind as it has such a damaging effect on the environment we live in. Since 1950, humans have created 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastic waste. It is also estimated that there are 5 trillion pieces of microplastic in the sea, so it is easily understandable why reducing our usage is such a pressing issue.

Not only have the airport attempted to tackle straw usage, but they have also introduced free drinking water refills from all food and drink outlets in another attempt to reduce single-use plastic waste (excluding the airside Pret A Manger branch). The alteration to LCA’s policy has been fuelled by the government’s plan to phase out available plastic by 2042, and now we are seeing many other corporations making the same move as London City Airport.

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