Cheers! Reusable cups for Boat Race beer

DRINKERS watching the Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Race along the Thames next month will be given reusable cups to keep plastic litter out of the water.

More than 250,000 are expected to line the river to watch the annual event on Sunday, April 7, and eight pubs in Putney, south-west London, will hand out 14,000 cups which can be refilled.

If each cup is used a few times, it will cut out around 50,000 single-use plastic cups, organisers Positively Putney Business Improvement District said. It found 80 per cent of the 300 tons of rubbish recovered from the Thames each year is single-use plastics.

The group’s spokesman Nicola Grant said: ‘This will drastically cut the use of plastics.’