One frosty January morning in 2001 I had a brief and unexpected encounter and chat with Prince Charles who was out walking on the Cumbrian fells, near Orthwaite in the Lake District .

I mentioned that about six rural pubs were closing each week. He seemed was genuinely by this statistic and said that he would look into the matter.

Later that year he became involved in the setting up of the Pub is the Hub initiative, which actively encourages breweries, pub owners, licencees and local communities to work together to help retain and enhance rural pubs.

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When new beer lines are installed in an outlet, it is now commonplace for the beer to be pushed through each line by a Flojet gas-operated pump. These pumps have superseded electric pumps.

It was common for real ale to pass through large bore plastic line and to be simply pulled though the line by a handpump at the bar. The industry standard now seems to be for real ale to be pulled though the same small bore lines (via a chilled python system) as for keg beers, assisted by an inline pump.

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When I started trading in 1983, my pub on Tyneside generated considerably less waste. Most of the bottled products were returnable and chargeable, as were the crates that they came in and nothing was packaged in plastic.

There has been a huge amount of government interference in the pub trade during the Blair regime but nothing has been done to tackle the problem of increasing volumes of waste materials produced by our suppliers.

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