Every year a prodigious amount of plastic waste is thrown away. According to the UN environment programme, 19-23 million tonnes of this waste discharges globally and is found largely in aquatic ecosystems.

As communities attempt to prevent this pervasive issue, what steps are local businesses within Jesmond taking to make a positive impact and provide their customers with an exceptional environmentally conscious experience?

In the heart of Jesmond, many businesses are recognising the ongoing issue of pollution and litter, both in and around Jesmond and globally. Alongside marginal increases in electric bills to pay, small businesses in Jesmond are finding ways to act sustainably and save the extra pennies.

The primary issue of plastic pollution stems from single-use items. Government estimates in 2023 declare that, across the hospitality industry, England uses 2.7 billion items of single-use cutlery, majority of which are plastic. After this information surfaced, the government announced that as of October 2023, people will not be able to buy plastic products from businesses.

Renowned across Jesmond, Pink Lane Bakery is one café that takes a sustainable approach to baking and provides incentives to encourage patrons to adopt eco-friendly behaviours. This popularity grew, aiding them to branch out into Newcastle City Centre and Gosforth.

Martha Jackson, co-owner of Pink Lane Bakery said: “A few years ago we upgraded to compostable cups, a rather easy upgrade. We don’t use any disposables in the café when customers sit in. It’s an easy chance to avoid single use products there. We also use electrical van and e-bikes for all our logistics and subscribed to environmental schemes to offset carbon for our business.”

She added: “As a business, we aren’t entirely plastic free, but we are always looking at new ways we can improve, be that cling film use or looking at alternatives to plastic film-lined packaging.”

Pink Lane Bakery also offers a discount to customers who bring their own reusable takeaway cup.

Originally, the café saw a surge in customers buying into this incentive. However, since the pandemic, there has been a fall in customers engaging with this. To improve this, Jackson told JesmondLocaI: “We will do some work on social media this year to try and set these habits again towards reusable materials.”

Pink Lane Bakery is one of many other small businesses who work alongside a community-driven initiative, named Plastic Free Jesmond.  This initiative began with the intent of helping businesses to work towards in a sustainable environment. To incentivise businesses Plastic Free Jesmond created an annual award, ‘The best plastic free business of the year’, which Pink Lane won most recently within North Jesmond in 2023.

Alongside Pink Lane Bakery, Plastic Free Jesmond has also collaborated with several renowned cafés including Cake Stories, Ouseburn Coffee, Harvest, Batch, and the refill shop Something Good.

The local initiative has not only left its mark on local cafés, but can be attributable for influencing the implementation of reusable bags at Waitrose on Osborne Road.

Plastic Free Jesmond organiser Tony Waterston said: “In particular in Waitrose they have now introduced a new recycling bin for soft plastics, the form of plastics covering you get on fruits.” Waterston added: “we asked for that.”

Plastic Free Jesmond aims to reduce the plastic used in Jesmond and prompt businesses to stop providing customers with the option to purchase plastic bottles, but instead offer to refill their reusable bottles. As of 2021, Defra statistics show that 2.5 million metric tons of plastic packaging was wasted within the United Kingdom.

Waterson told JesmondLocal: “No one needs to buy water, it’s crazy, it’s extraordinarily expensive, wasteful and damaging to the environment. We want to promote the idea that you don’t need to buy water you can refill your own. We need to find one business who says that they won’t sell water in a plastic bottle anymore, but we appreciate that it requires a little bit of courage.”

Waterston added: “We need to get rid of plastics, it can be done, we just need a government with the ambition to do it.”

Plastic Free Jesmond discussed for the potential possibility of installing water fountains in Jesmond streets. This idea emerged due to similar offerings in other towns across the UK, such as Bristol, Brighton, St. Andrews and Oban in Scotland.

North Jesmond resident, Tony Sharkey, 59, told JesmondLocal: “Plastic Free Jesmond is great for us as a community. The use of plastic locally in coffee shops and supermarkets within Jesmond contribute to some of the litter problems in the area. Implementing the use of recyclable products within cafés should be encouraged by the council.”

Recently, Plastic Free Jesmond hosted a meeting in November, discussing their plans for the community this year. At the meeting it was agreed that their next annual award will be announced in at Jesmond Community Festival, which will be taken place in May.