Tramlines Fringe weekend 2025 showed us venues in Sheffield are still using single-use plastic cups. 8 years on after Blue Planet II showed us the impact of plastic in our environment. Times are a-changing though, with Sheffield City Council telling us this week they’re writing to traders and licensed venues to encourage them to not use single-use plastic cups, and instead use reusables.

However as single-use plastic cups are often cheaper than purchasing or hiring reusable cups, there aren’t incentives for businesses to switch.

So if you care about this issue, please write to your local Councillors asking the Council to provide funding/investment to businesses to adopt reusables.

The facts

• 100+ million plastic cups are used every year at UK festivals and live events, and most of these are incinerated or sent to landfill
• Globally 500 billion plastic cups are used each year. If lined up end-to-end these cups would span 50 million kilometres – or more than 130 trips from the Earth to the Moon
• Plastic pint cups are the sixth-most commonly found plastic item in Britain’s rivers, and the eighth on the nation’s beaches
  
• For every 1 million reusable event cups in regular use, 1000 tonnes of C02e emissions and 300 tonnes waste could be avoided.