Evening Standard comment: The Last Straw in our war on needless plastic

Sometimes the scale of environmental problems makes us wonder whether the small actions we take make any difference.

Yet millions of us do our bit — we recycle, we buy eco-friendly cars, we try not to litter. We know our lives add to the environmental problem and while most of us don’t want to be green hermits, we do want to help.

That is particularly true in the case of plastic.

Invented by humans as a wonder-material, it’s dirt cheap to produce and can be used for almost any purpose — its blessings have become a curse.

This is particularly the case with disposable plastic in the food industry. Plastic bottles, plastic cutlery, plastic cups and plastic straws, used only once, have rapidly replaced recyclable paper, wood and glass alternatives.

This is harmful for nature, especially our marine life. The estimated 150 million tonnes of plastic in our oceans are killing one million sea birds and 100,000 sea mammals a year.

That’s why we warmly welcomed the plan Michael Gove launched last week, with the support of the PM — extending the plastic bag tax introduced by David Cameron, consulting on a levy for plastic cups et al, and seeking to eliminate “avoidable” single-use plastics over the next 25 years.

But we shouldn’t just rely on government to solve problems, nor do we need to wait that long to achieve our goals. We can take action now.

That’s where our new campaign — The Last Straw —comes in.

We start with a simple premise. If we could eliminate the use of plastic straws in London, and across the country, we would make a big difference.

That’s because Britain is a big user of plastic straws.

In London alone, two billion of them are used every year — more than the whole of Italy. Each one takes seconds to make, minutes to use and hundreds of years to degrade.

Crucially, unlike other plastics, there are easy alternatives available — paper straws, corn syrup ones, even bamboo straws.

Some London restaurants and bars have already led the way and we applaud them.

You won’t get a plastic straw at Jamie’s Italian, Wahaca, Wetherspoons and All Bar One.

As we reported last week, the big restaurant group D&D London is phasing them out.

This morning, top chef Jason Atherton joins them by getting rid of plastic straws from his venues.

As Mr Gove writes in a column for the Evening Standard, “the leadership shown by these companies and championed by the Standard can make a decisive difference in our attitude towards waste and the health of our planet”.

Now, we go a step further. Today the Evening Standard is calling on all restaurants, bars, cafés and coffee shops across the capital to take The Last Straw pledge and commit to eco- alternatives.

Over the coming weeks we will celebrate those who do, and question those who don’t.

Who bails out Carillion?

The giant construction company Carillion went bust today.

This matters for 20,000 anxious UK employees. It causes problems for government which, under all parties, used it to build railways, manage schools and maintain prisons.

It raises concern about ongoing public services. And taxpayers will now have to pay — the issue is how much.

You can be in favour of private firms bringing innovation and efficiency to government services while still asking questions about Carillion.

Why has the state found itself so dependent on a few very large outsourcing firms?

The failure to use a variety of smaller, mid-size companies undermines innovation and leaves services hostage when things go wrong.

Why was Carillion awarded huge contracts by the civil service, with whom rather than ministers almost all procurement decisions lie after they knew it was struggling last year?

Above all, how we will insist — as we must — that shareholders are bailed in before the taxpayer is asked to fund any kind of bailout?

We wait for answers.