2018

Cafe 1899 is plastic clever

Date Posted: 10:52 AM on Thu, 13 December 2018

Gedling County Park’s Café 1899 has become a Plastic Clever Café as part of the council’s commitment to be a Plastic Clever Council.

The café has met the criteria set out by environmental champions Amy and Ella Meek who formed Kids against Plastic, who have been campaigning to get people to reduce their use of single-use plastics.

The cafe has taken a number of actions to become plastic clever including removing single use plastic bags, replacing plastic cutlery and plastic straws and encouraging visitors to use refillable mugs and water bottles instead of throw away plastic ones. The café will also be selling reusable cup holders and introducing new loyalty cards for visitors.

The café accreditation is part of a number of initiatives set out by Gedling Borough Council to tackle the problems of the use of single-use plastics in the borough. In January, the council agreed a motion to stop the use of plastics in council owned buildings and a working group has been working on reviewing the council’s procurement of plastic and reducing the amounts they use significantly in council owned buildings.

Amy and Ella Meek launched the Kids against Plastic scheme in 2015 with a target to collect 100,000 pieces of plastic after learning the negative effect of plastic on the environment. They recently presented their campaign to staff at the council’s annual employee conference urging them to think before they use the big four polluters, plastic bags, cutlery, coffee cups and straws.

Café 1899, which was recently awarded with a certificate of excellence by Trip Advisor for its ‘consistent achievement of high ratings from customers’, is named after the year the former colliery opened and is managed by Nottingham City Council and serves hot and cold refreshments, food and has a fully licensed bar.

Kids against Plastic Campaigners, Amy and Ella Meek said;

“We're really pleased that Café 1899 has become our latest Plastic Clever Café and we're really grateful for the continued support from Gedling Borough Council. We've nearly made all of the cafés down the Arnold high street Plastic Clever - just one or two left to work on - hopefully the Council can help us persuade them to become Plastic Clever one day. At least now when we take our dog for a walk at Gedling Country Park we know that we'll see less single-use plastic littering the paths.”

Leader of Gedling Borough Council, Councillor John Clarke said;

“We’re committed to reducing the amount of single-use plastics we use in our buildings and with the help of the Kids against Plastic team, we have taken the right steps to make the Gedling Country Park Café plastic clever. We are also reviewing the plastic usage at our council offices and leisure centres as part of our pledge to be a plastic clever council. We must do more to tackle this issue and I’m delighted that we passed the very stringent assessments set out by Amy and Ella Meek who are doing a fantastic job of raising awareness of this important issue.”