Can you help make a ‘plastic-free’ Bonfire night?
We reported last month on reusable ‘Lewes Cups’ making their second appearance at Lewes Bonfire on 5 November to help slash plastic waste. Now there are two key ways you can help with the plastic-free drive: help collect up used ‘Lewes Cups’ on the night – and urge everyone you know to dig out their own cups to take to the pub.
Bonfire season is upon us again, and as part of Lewes Town Council’s drive to reduce plastic waste at the town’s biggest event, most pubs will be using reusable cups again instead of single-use plastic.
The idea for reusable ‘Lewes Cups’ came about following a request from young people in Lewes, via the organisation Green United, for the bonfire celebrations to reduce their plastic use.
But the pubs need your support to cut the plastic – and there are two vital ways you can help.
Be a ‘Lewes Cup’ collector
So that as many as possible of the solid reusable Lewes Cups can be recovered, then washed and stored for future events, a group of volunteers go out to collect any stray cups left near bonfire sites and pubs.
At about 11.30pm on the night, as people start to go home, five teams fan out across the town bagging up any stray cups. Meanwhile two e-cargo bikes from GetBikery will be on call, ferrying full bags from all the teams back to base.
‘We’re usually done by about 12.30pm’ says Nick Tigg, a Lewes town councillor who has been promoting the scheme. ‘And then later in the morning the District clean-up team start their work, that’s why we need to get out before them to recycle everything we can.’
Being part of the cup collection team can be great fun way to get involved on the night and ensure more reusable Lewes Cups are saved for future events. If you can volunteer, email Councillor Nick Tigg at .
Bring your own cup
To reduce the pressure on pubs to provide reusable cups, everyone coming to Bonfire in Lewes is also being asked to bring their own cup (in exactly the way we all now take our own bags to the supermarket).
As long as your cup has the legal markings on it for pint, half pint etc, all pubs in the town will refill it. Ask friends and family visiting for Bonfire to bring their own cups too.
If you don’t have a cup with you, you can still buy one of the Lewes Cups for £1, with all proceeds going to further plastic reduction schemes in the town. But if you can use a validly-marked cup you already have in your kitchen cupboards – even better.
And hopefully it means a lot less plastic waste for the clean-up crews to have to sweep up on 6 November.
Have a happy and plastic-free Lewes Bonfire!