In an eco-friendly move made last week, the Nimax theatre group has halted the use of plastic straws in their bars, hopefully setting the "greenprint" for other theatre groups to follow suit.
Nimax made their decision after the Westminster council leader Nickie Aiken filed an appeal. The theatre group's CEO, Nica Burns, said the theatre was exploring other options in their use of plastic and thanked the Standard and Westminster council for taking on such an important issue.
Nickie Aiken has already urged thousands of establishments, including bars, clubs, pubs and theatres, to cease the use of plastic straws. In regards to the campaign's sleeper hit success, Ms. Aiken had this to say: "The Last Straw campaign is inspiring everyone to think about the plastic they use and reduce their plastic waste."
Nearby Soho restaurateur Russell Norman proclaimed that his venues, Polp, Spuntino and Polpetto, have already switched to biodegradable straws.
According to The Last Straw campaign, London is the city with the most plastic straws in all of Europe - the undesirable superlative from which this no-straws initiative was born. Every year, approximately two billion plastic straws are tossed into the rubbish bin. This annual waste amounts to Italy's entire stockpile.
A very small percentage of plastic straws are actually recycled due to their minuscule size. The remaining straws are deposited in a landfill or end up in rivers, seas, and oceans where they continue on to harm marine life. It takes just 20 minutes to use a plastic drinking straw, but nearly 500 years for it to decompose.
"If we all work together we should be able to collectively reduce our plastic usage significantly to help our environment," said Nimax CEO Nica Burns.
The Nimax theatre group runs the Apollo, Vaudeville, Palace, Lyric, Duchess and Garrick theatres.