By
Rebecca Gibson |
Spirits company Bacardi has joined forces with non-profit Lonely Whale to remove one billion plastic straws and other single-use plastic items from passenger ships and shoreside bars, hotels restaurants, cafes and other hospitality venues by 2020.
Bacardi, which supplies spirits to some of the world’s major cruise operators, will work with Lonely Whale to launch #TheFutureDoesntSuck campaign, which will see them encouraging consumers and businesses to significantly reduce single-use plastic straw consumption.
The campaign will kick off in England, where Bacardi will eliminate plastic straws from branded events, music activations and the Bacardi Rum Truck, while donating the proceeds of ticket sales from its Casa Bacardi music events in various UK cities to the Lonely Whale’s Strawless Ocean initiative. Bacardi will also use biodegradable paper cups across the UK activations.
This autumn, Bacardi will do the same at all its major music activations in North America and also continue to partner with national chains and independent accounts to promote plastic-free, marine-friendly straw, or strawless options for cocktails. The programme will then be extended to China and work with 10 leaders in the hospitality and spirits industry to drive adoption of the pledge. In addition, Bacardi’s global headquarters in Bermuda has launched a new training programme for distributor partners and on-premise locations that offer alternatives to plastic straws.
“In 2016, Bacardi led the drinks industry with the first #NoStraws campaign focusing on eliminating single-use plastic straw from its cocktails. In 2017, Lonely Whale amplified this early leadership, creating one of the most celebrated global movements around the single-use plastic straw with our Strawless Ocean initiative to remove 500 million plastic straws from the US waste stream,” said Dune Ives, executive director of Lonely Whale. “Now in 2018, we celebrate the combined power of Bacardi and Lonely Whale to reduce the single-use plastic straw population by one billion by 2020 in what we believe will become one of the most impactful environmental campaigns of this decade.”
As part of the initiative, Bacardi will also review its global supply chain and remove any non-essential, non-recyclable single-use plastic waste and instead increase its use of recyclable and biodegradable plastic.
“Engaging our accounts and our consumers in the reduction of single-use plastic is a critical next step in helping to put an end to plastic pollution,” said Rick Wilson, senior vice president of Corporate Responsibility for Bacardi. “Single-use plastic items are among the most collected pieces of trash in our oceans, and we are urging our consumers to add ‘No plastic straw, please’ to every drink order so together we can make impactful change.”
Bacardi is the latest in an increasingly long list of companies in the cruise industry that are banning single-use plastic. European ferry operator Stena Line has replaced plastic bags with fully recyclable bioplastic bags made from sugar cane; Norwegian expedition travel operator Hurtigruten introduced a single-use plastics ban in July 2018; UK-based operator Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines has removed plastic straws and cutlery onboard its four ocean cruise ships; and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. is to eliminate plastic straws from the 50 ships in its Azamara Club Cruises, Celebrity Cruises, Pullmantur Cruceros, Royal Caribbean International and TUI Cruises fleets from 2019. By 2022, ships in P&O Cruises and Cunard's fleets will no longer rely on single-use plastic for hotel operations. Meanwhile, the Association of Arctic Expedition Cruise Operators’ (AECO) has secured funding to help it significantly reduce the use of single-use plastics on Arctic expedition cruise vessels and to increase the number of cruise passengers participating in regular beach clean-ups.