Havelock North businesses say no to plastic straws

Mamacita Restaurant co-owner Liv Reynolds with Lily, 3, and some of the restaurant's staff, Maggie McDonald, Matt Rose, Zoe Parker and Nick Neilson. Photo / Ruby Harfield

Havelock North has become a little bit greener with at least three businesses ditching plastic straws.

Patrons of Mamacita Restaurant, Wright & Co. and Hugo Chang have not had drinks with single-use plastic straws since March 16 as part of the establishments' No Straw initiative.

Co-owner of all three businesses, Liv Reynolds, said the move was a bit different to others around the country because the establishments were also encouraging patrons to request "no straws thanks" wherever they dined or drank in the hope other businesses would reconsider using plastic straws.

"Plastic straws are a huge issue within the environment," Reynolds said.

"It can take up to 200 years for a single plastic straw to break down in the ocean and with some restaurants using up to 800 straws a week it is seriously taking its toll on landfills and the environment."

Her aim is for Havelock North, and ideally all of Hawke's Bay, to become completely straw-free.

"Ultimately, I would love Hawke's Bay to be the first region in the country to be completely plastic straw-free.

"I appreciate this is ambitious so we are starting on our home turf in Havelock North.

"I truly believe this initiative for Havelock North is completely achievable and really hope the bars and restaurants here will get involved if they haven't already."

The initiative came about after a few emails from disgruntled customers who were unhappy with the plastic straws.

"We were aware of the plastic straw issue, we had been partially pro-active but we hadn't been consistent.

"It was at that point that I realised that going straw-free was easy but trying to get others onboard might be a bit more of a challenge. Having always been up for a challenge I decided to focus this message at the customer as opposed to the establishments, even though it is the hospitality establishments that need to make the change.

"If bars and restaurants are frequently getting requests from their customers asking for 'no straw thanks' then they would be forced to rethink whether automatically adding a plastic straw to their beverages was necessary."

Communication is key with this initiative because some people like using straws, she said.

"They do not like being served a drink without a straw and no explanation.

"However, when we outline the fact that we serve our drinks without straws in an effort to reduce the plastic ending up in our oceans but we do have a compostable alternative, 99 per cent of the time the customer will happily forgo the alternative option as well and be really supportive of the initiative."

Part of the initiative is to encourage people to post images on social media with the hashtag #nostrawthanks to help spread the message.