Why does the beach hotel use single use pet plastic on busy nights?



Did you know?

The Beach Hotel has its own unique and one of a kind recycling system which involves the entire Beach Hotel team separating waste as part of its day to day operations.

The team from Revolve Your World works every morning to separate and process this waste further to ensure that as much as possible is diverted from landfill.

Currently the Beach Hotel is diverting over 90% of its waste from landfill which is not only amazing for a venue our size but is absolutely leading the way in sustainable initiatives in the hospitality Industry.

The good news is that we are aiming for 100% diversion from landfill with only a few more hurdles to jump.

The use of single use plastic cups is obviously a huge concern for many of our patrons and rightly so. However, we use them only with best interest of the planet and our patrons in mind and we will continue our search for the ideal solution to not having to use these at all.

Single use plastic cups are ONLY used when absolutely necessary, all other busy nights we use a cup called the Globelet when we need to serve in plastic and these awesome cups are made of a sustainable re-usable plastic and any damaged cups can also be sent back to supplier to be made into a new cup, please see link below.

https://globelet.com/

Why does the Beach Hotel use single use PET Plastic on busy nights?

Safety is paramount so plastic is required to reduce the risk of injury within our venue particularly when patrons are dancing and moving around. In order to allow space for people to dance we need to clear floor space and remove tables and chairs meaning there is minimal areas to put glass down safely.

PET plastic itself is soft and will easily crumple under the weight of someone's foot reducing the risk of injury

PET plastic is 100% recyclable compared to other plastics.

In addition to this we simply can't keep up with washing glassware whether it be hard plastic or glass.

In order to meet health & safety requirements and hygiene standards then regardless of the amount of staff we roster on it comes down to the capability of the glass washing machines as they require a certain amount of time to wash per cycle to be hygienic and in short we don't have enough space for the amount of glass washing machines that would be required.

The only way that we could effectively achieve this is if we had an offsite washing and drying facility that would allow the venue to stock and store thousands more reusable glasses for busy nights allowing us to wash the glassware at the required amount of time, at the required temperature and ensuring that they can dry hygienically, so that they don't pose any health risks to anyone.

The Beach Hotel is considering an offsite facility in, or near Byron Bay, that will do this for us - we welcome your suggestions.

Why don't you use plant-based plastic options?

Simply put plant-based plastic (PLA) is not all it's cracked up to be with a very high carbon footprint in the manufacture of these cups and create greenhouse gas emissions if placed in landfill.

There are currently no composting systems in the Northern Rivers that can process PLA cups

Why don't you simply use Polycarbonate Hard Plastic?

We need to use non-breakable glassware, but hard polycarbonate glassware isn't the answer for a venue our size

As mentioned earlier the hard plastic is not designed to be flexible so if it is stood on then it is not going to give way and will cause a rolling action on the ground which may result in serious injury. If the glass does in fact break under the weight of someone then being a hard plastic it will cause a very sharp edge which also poses a danger.

Polycarbonate glassware is currently not recyclable in our area, so if this type of plastic that gets broken or damaged, it ends up in landfill.

Polycarbonate glassware damages easily and quickly becomes unpresentable with scratches, this is a huge hygiene risk as bacteria can build up in these cracks and cause health issues for our patrons particularly if it was not washed correctly or for the required amount of time or at the right temperature.

In short ...

The Beach Hotel doesn't like using PET Plastic cups and we understand they are a single use item.

However, we do our best to use single use plastic as little as possible and we recycle all the PET plastic cups when we do have to use them.

We love the planet but we also care about you, so until we find the perfect system that will work for us, please trust that we are doing our absolute best to keep you safe, as well as be the most environmentally responsible and sustainable venue possible.

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