THIS is the final straw:

An Oxfordshire pub chain fed up with wanton waste has decided to ban plastic straws.

Oakman Inns, which runs the Crown and Thistle Hotel in Abingdon and several others, will institute the new pub-wide policy this Saturday on Earth Day, declaring ‘we think straws suck’.

The company currently uses more than 100,000 plastic straws every month across its 18 establishments which also include the Blue Boar in Witney and Wallingford’s Old Post Office.

CEO Peter Borg-Neal said: “It sounds ridiculous, but it is entirely accurate to say, that every plastic straw that was ever made, still exists today.

“They pollute landfills, rivers, roadsides, sewers, beaches and of course oceans and this relatively small amount that this pub group is taking out of circulation, needs to be repeated by every one of my colleagues across the hospitality industry.”

From Saturday, any customer who asks for a straw will be offered an eco-friendly biodegradable alternative.

Oakman operations director Alex Ford said: “From 2020, all plastic cutlery and plates will be banned in France.

“Bangladesh was the first country in the world in 2002 to ban plastic shopping bags and California banned single-use plastic bags in 2014.

“Yes, the UK has introduced a charge for plastic carrier bags and has banned microbeads, the tiny plastic balls used in cosmetics and cleaning products, but I believe we all have to do more, because pretty soon, every fish we eat will have ingested some plastic and that will become a truly global environmental disaster that will probably be impossible to solve.”

Mr Borg-Neal added: “At Oakman we try to live by our values every day, and we hope that those values and our commitment to sustainability means that everyone here is contributing to a better future for us all.”