Ascot Racecourse is setting itself the ambitious target of washing more than 500,000 plastic glasses of all kinds during the five-day Royal Meeting next week - champagne, beer, wine, everything ....
Working with the game-changing operation ‘Re-Cup’, 350 dedicated staff will be engaged to keep as many items as possible within the circle. Racegoers will be able to place their used cups into one of over 200 dedicated bins around site to be washed and re-used.
Jonathan Parker, Director of Food & Beverage at Ascot, said, “This is a very exciting moment in our sustainability journey. We are asking our customers to return their Re-Cup glasses to any bar when they have finished or to put them into the dedicated, clearly branded 200+ bins across the site.
“We will also have people scouring the site to collect from tables, picnic areas and such like. The glasses then get separated at six Re-Cup compounds and taken to the washing facility at Tilbury Docks, and then they come back to us. Each cup has an approximate 100 servings life.”
Collections from the racecourse will leave the site between midnight and 2am every night and the facility can wash 150,000 Re-Cups in a 24-hour cycle. Any broken cups will be sent directly to be recycled.
Parker added, "No deposit is required from customers as we don’t want to inconvenience anyone. All we ask is that our visitors join us in committing to making a significant difference by reducing plastic waste.
“Re-Cup has been in operation in the Premier League and at Lord’s [cricket ground] but this is by far and away the biggest project they have ever worked on. The Lord’s Test is expected to see about 50,000 washes.”
Ascot’s official water, Harrogate Spring Water, is bottled in PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic. All PET bottles collected at Ascot will be recycled and used to produce new bottles in a closed loop recycling system.
Harrogate Water pioneered the ‘Incredible Shrinking Bottle Campaign’ in partnership with Keep Britain Tidy, which encourages customers to ‘Twist It, Cap It, Recycle It’. Dedicated PET plastic bottle bins are clearly marked on site.