Leeds Fest joins the rest of the city in cutting down plastic waste

Leeds Festival will be joining the fight against plastic waste this summer - as they introduce a bottle deposit scheme.

It's as a campaign urges EVERYONE in the city to help reduce the amount plastic we throw away.

Cafe and restaurant owners in the city are drafting in the help of the council to find ways of cracking down.

It includes a new scoring system - similar to the hygiene rating - that will reveal how environmentally friendly a business is.

As well as plans to get rid of ALL plastic straws.

Mattia Boldetti owns Livin'Italy in Granary Wharf, he helped set up the scheme:

“Being a restauranteur myself, I know all too well about the amount of plastic waste produced by operations like ours in UK, and I am aware of the difficulties for waste management companies to recycle it.

“Bars and restaurants excessively use plastic straws without considering the impact on the environment. I understand what practical solutions can be implemented to solve the problem, which are feasible, and which are not."

This comes as the Co-op is launching a trial "deposit return scheme'' at music festivals this summer as part of efforts to boost plastic recycling and cut marine pollution, the retailer said.

The pilot will see reverse vending machines installed on site at Co-op pop-up stores at Download, Leicestershire, Latitude, Suffolk, and Reading and Leeds festivals to help people recycle their plastic bottles.

Plastic bottles sold at the Co-op pop-up stores will have a mandatory deposit added to the price, with festival goers able to return them to the reverse vending machine in exchange for a voucher to spend in the on-site stores.

The bottles collected at each festival will then go on to be recycled to create bottles for Co-op's own brand bottled water.

The company said it was the first retailer to launch a deposit return scheme, just months after the Government said it was planning to bring in the policy as part of efforts to fight the rising tide of plastic in the oceans.

Jo Whitfield, retail chief executive at the Co-op, said: As the UK's leading ethical retailer there's nowhere better for us to start our trial of reverse vending machines than at some of the UK's most well-loved festivals.

Reducing the amount of plastic that makes its way to landfill is really important to us and our members.

We're committed to giving our customers ways to make more ethical choices, so this is a hugely exciting milestone in our sustainability journey to achieve our future aim of making all of our food packaging 100% recyclable.''

The trial has been facilitated by a partnership with Festival Republic whose managing director said: We welcome over 350,000 revellers across these four iconic festival sites.

It's absolutely fantastic to think that they will be amongst the first people in the UK to have the opportunity to recycle their plastic bottles simply and easily using the reverse vending machine, in addition to the existing deposit return schemes at the festivals.''

The latest moves to tackle plastic come after more than 60 of the UK's biggest music festivals pledged to ban the use of plastic straws at their events this summer