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.

In June 2007 not a single bottle that I buy in is returnable. My last supplier to switch to non-returnable bottles has been Britvic, who in May 2007 did away with returnables and increased their prices.

Local councils are target-driven, thanks to the Blair years, but when it comes to recycling, there have no targets for commercial users. Private recycling firms are thin on the ground and the two that I have dealt with recently have both ceased trading.

I have had an ongoing dialogue with the mayor of North Tyneside, John Harrison, in a futile effort to get the council to start collecting recyclable materials from pubs in the borough. Why is it that councils in nearby Cumbria provide a service but North Tyneside chooses not to?

If the government was serious about minimising waste, they could easily have introduced legislation making most glass bottles returnable. A handful of companies produce most of what we drink out of bottles in a pub so the Government doesn’t have many firms to lean on.

Wine bottles are all a standard size and the bulk of beer and alcopops are sold in a standard 275ml or 330ml bottle. All they need to do is slap different paper labels on them and make them returnable with deposits.

Budweiser was the first large volume beer to be sold in this country in non-returnable bottles and it set an ugly trend. More recently, Magners hit our shelves big-style in non-returnable pint bottles.

In the mid nineties, I owned a dockside pub which shifted over 250 dozen bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale a week, but every single bottle and crate went back to Gallowgate to be reused. Just a few months ago– you guessed – even Brown Ale went non-returnable in the on-trade.

Whereas returnable bottles come in crates, non-returnable bottles are packed in cardboard and shrink-wrapped with polythene and the whole lot is supposed to be recycled. Far better that the waste is not generated in the first place.

The general public have the same problem as publicans, as nothing bought from a supermarket is sold in returnable containers. It would be ‘inconvenient’ for supermarkets to insist that all of their bottles go ‘returnable’. Sooner or later they are going to have to. Why not start with milk and wine?

The bosses of our supermarkets keep spouting their green credentials, but not one single supermarket boss has forced a supplier to provide any product whatsoever in a returnable container because it would mean more work for their staff. The only items that are reused are the wood pallets on which they come in on.

Maybe the European Parliament will eventually force manufacturers to use only returnable bottles. I do not foresee our MPs doing anything.

Before the War, even jam jars were returnable.

I look forward to the day when we have the minor inconvenience of putting all the different bottles into various crates in the cellar for return to our suppliers.

Hugh Price
Tynemouth Lodge Hotel