Sidmouth Eats Boutique, the monthly pop-up street food market, has received recognition from Surfers Against Sewage as a Plastic Free Champion. It's an accolade that organiser Eleanor Carr is delighted to shout about. 

In order to receive the award, Eleanor needed to demonstrate that her business had removed three types of plastic from the Eats Boutique events. She ensures her traders minimise their packaging, and can make the real difference on the resident pop up pub, The Salty Arms.

The first plastic to go were the single-use plastic cups. Many events and festivals now offer beautifully designed, collectible branded cups as a one-off purchase. Customers then refill these and keep them as souvenirs. But being a small business Eleanor doesn't have the resources to buy in bulk, nor to store the minimum order of several thousand cups.

The solution was to invest in a scheme called the Borrow and Wash. Customers pay a £1.25 deposit on a cup when they purchase their drink from The Salty Arms. When they return the cup £1 of the deposit is returned. The 25p "hire" goes towards the wage cost of washing the cups and replacing those cups that reach the end of their life. Eleanor finds that most people return their cups to get their £1 back and that people are happy to pay the 25 p charge. "It just helps the scheme remain viable to me as a small business without resorting to single use plastics which are a much simpler and the most economical way to run a mobile bar."

Eleanor's Borrow and Wash encourages the move away from behaviour that makes our lives easier but has a negative environmental impact. Instead it looks to solutions that work with the infrastructure we have. "Biodegradable plastic cups are a bit of a green wash, as here in the south west we haven't yet got the commercial water management infrastructure to deal with compostable food packaging."

The second item Eleanor removed were plastic straws, even the biodegradable ones. Blue-striped paper straws are just so much more cheerful, never mind that paper ones are gone in about 6 weeks. A plastic straw can take up to 200 years to decompose. 

Lastly, The Salty Arms switched over to tin cans as much as possible, removing plastic water bottles and replacing with cans of water. The cans are even re-sealable so you can reuse the can. When it reaches the end of its life tin cans be recycled easily, again and again and again. 

These are just small steps towards solving our issues with too much rubbish on our planet. Each of them help us to think about waste, where it goes and how we can find better solutions. The Borrow and Wash scheme isn't perfect as the cups are still plastic, but a plastic that is more durable and can be used up to 100 times.

Eleanor said: "If we can find a new purpose for the cracked and scarred cups that are no longer good enough to drink from, then we'll be moving even further in the right direction towards a circular plastic economy. I had this idea they might be useful as a mini cloche …. Any gardeners out there who could make use of them?"

Sidmouth Eats Boutique is monthly pop up street food market that takes place on the lawn of Kennaway House during the summer. There are other Eats Boutique markets in Seaton, Axminster and Lyme Regis, all co-ordinated by local Eleanor Carr who lives in Colyford. The next Sidmouth Eats Boutique will be on Friday 14 July 4-9pm. For more information pleas visit the Unique Boutique Events website.