The Jubilee Pool

Name: Flo Gibson

Current actions:

• Paper Bags
• Wooden Cutlery
• Cardboard Drinks’ carriers and pizza boxes
• Customer Recycle Points
• Coffee Refills
• Water refills
• Homemade, plastic free cakes and pastries
• Sugar lumps in reusable jars
• Banned sachets

Planned action:

• Checking credentials of sustainable coffee cups
• Looking into solutions for children’s juice

“It’s been really easy. A lot of it is because it’s something that we really care about and it’s a lot easier because people are becoming more aware of plastic and the negative effects. Suppliers are a lot more aware, so you can go to your suppliers now and say – we want to find an alternative to plastic bags and they’ll say OK fine – so we’ve now got paper bags.

“It isn’t noticeably more expensive and you can very quickly offset the costs. When we first opened we did everything to take-away and we quickly saw the amount of packaging that we went through. If that was all plastic there would have been uproar from customers. It would have been so negative those customers wouldn’t have returned. So you’ve got to think longer term.

“People probably see in their own homes how quickly the plastic builds up – so imagine what it’s like to do it on a business level where you’re catering for 50 – 100 people a day on lunches! Any other businesses who are thinking of doing it – just think how much of a big difference you can make by making these small changes that don’t have to be that painful.”