Queen Bans Plastic From Royal Estates After Chat With Sir David Attenborough

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The Queen is banning plastic straws and bottles from the Royal estates, after working with Sir David Attenborough.

We all know plastic is destroying the environment, Sir Attenborough even dedicated an episode of Blue Planet to show the extent to which we’re poisoning the world.

Now it seems his determination to get this issue to the forefront of people’s minds has reached the Queen.

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Buckingham Palace has outlined its new waste plans and said there was a ‘strong desire to tackle the issue’ at the highest levels of the Royal household, according to The Telegraph.

It’s being reported the Queen became personally interested in the issues surrounding plastic use, after working with Sir David on a conservation documentary.

Both the Queen and Sir Attenborough are 91-years-old and have been filmed laughing together during the programme, which looked at plans to create national forested parks across the 52 countries of the Commonwealth.

She will phase out plastic straws in public cafes and will ban them altogether in staff dining rooms.

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Caterers inside Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse will only be allowed to use china plates, glasses, or recyclable paper cups.

As well as this, takeaway food in the Royal Collection cafes must be served in compostable or biodegradable packaging.

A Buckingham Palace spokesman said:

Across the organisation, the Royal Household is committed to reducing its environmental impact.

As part of that, we have taken a number of practical steps to cut back on the use of plastics. At all levels, there’s a strong desire to tackle this issue.

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Many people would rather buy a plastic bottle of water than refill a metal one with tap or even filtered water, just because of the convenience of the former option.

In an effort to combat this, a new network of drinking fountains and bottle-refill points is set to be rolled out across London to reduce the amount of waste from single-use plastic.

According to The Guardian, the drinking fountains will first be rolled out across London in a pilot scheme over the next few months.

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The scheme will include drinking fountains across the city and a bottle-refill initiative, in which businesses make tap water available to the public. There are also plans afoot to make plastic cups, bottles and cutlery available at City Hall.

The scheme will last three years, costing £750,000, though it’s hard to put a price on the value of the reduction of plastic in everyday use in the UK’s largest city.

The deputy mayor for environment, Shirley Rodrigues, said:

We shouldn’t be using single-use plastics, the impact on the environment is so immense. We just need to get on now and stop their use in London.

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Drinking fountains are in woefully short supply across the country, with no working fountains in major cities like Manchester, Liverpool or Birmingham. Across England’s 36 metropolitan boroughs, only eight fountains were working.

The latest plans are part of a move by London mayor Sadiq Khan to reduce plastic across the city, including the reduction of plastic packaging, as well as making sure no biodegradable or recyclable waste is sent to landfill by 2026.

So glad to see this is being recognised.

UNILAD