This notice in the fish and chip shop in Ponteland is an interesting conundrum in the battle to reduce plastic. Offering customers a choice is surely a good thing, as much as anything it shows some level of recognition of the issue. However how many customers are aware enough to exercise a positive plastic free choice? In the end it has to be the suppliers (and in this case the shop) that provide plastic free as a matter of course.
So how did the shop do in its packaging? A standard fish and chips comes in a cardboard box but other smaller items seemed to be put in a polystyrene container as a matter of course (presumably you’d need to ask for it not to be). However the main downfall has to be that every order was put in a standard, throw away, plastic carrier bag unless you asked specifically for it without so in my visit everyone (except me) walked out with one of these bags.
A notice like this is a start but only a start, there’s a long way to go to ween society off it’s love of plastic.
Going Plastic Free 