It's been a good week for … the planet
ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners had cause to celebrate last week as a major pub chain announced it was calling time on plastic drinking straws.
Wetherspoon has said it will only use biodegradable paper straws from January 2018 in a move it claims will stop 70 million plastic straws being thrown into landfill or ending up our oceans each year.
It follows in the footsteps of All Bar One, which back in June vowed to reduce its straw usage by one-third.
An online campaign dubbed Refuse The Straw – which began in the US and is gathering momentum worldwide – is encouraging other pubs and restaurants to follow suit.
Plastic drinking straws are reported to take up to 500 years to decompose. They have been found lodged in the nostrils of sea turtles and having perforated the stomachs of penguins.
The United Nations estimates there are 46,000 pieces of waste plastic per square mile of sea.
In this case, the final straw can only be a good thing.
It's been a bad week for … postcards
FOR generations the postcard was as much of a holiday staple as candy floss, kiss-me-quick hats and donkey rides on the beach at Blackpool.
During their Edwardian heyday around 860 million were being posted in Britain every year. But just as video killed the radio star, selfies have sounded the death knell for the humble postcard.
Alas, the saucy seaside ditty and pretty panoramic scene has been usurped by Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram photographs showing filtered images of "hotdog" legs on poolside loungers and swanky sunset cocktails.
The UK's oldest publisher of postcards, Kent-based J Salmon, which has been run by the same family since 1800, will cease operations at the end of the year.
Its company directors cited "mobile phones, new technologies, changing spending and holiday patterns" for the "challenging trading conditions" which have prompted them to close.
There is something gallingly sad about this news. One can't help but mourn the physical and tangible being replaced by the disposable and transient.
Here's hoping that like vinyl records, postcards enjoy a retro resurgence.
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