SINGLE-USE plastic such as cutlery, cups and straws are set to be removed from schools and Fife Council offices to help save the planet. 

And councillors at an environment, protective services and community safety committee meeting today (Thursday) will be told failure to do so will “set a bad example”. 

Reports of how plastic is damaging the natural world have led to a drive to try to reduce how much we use and discard. 

But council chiefs have been told the green move could cost more money. 

Ken Gourlay, head of assets, transportation and environment, said: “The scale of work required to understand and quantify the full cost and resource impact of eliminating single-use plastics from use across the entire council should not be under-estimated.” 

The main single-use items used across the council, including in schools, are plastic cups (including coffee cups and lids), bottles, plastic cutlery and various plastic containers, such as yoghurt pots. 

They’ll also speak to suppliers to reduce packaging on deliveries of goods or equipment and encourage staff, service users and school pupils to use refillable bottles and reusable items.

Every department and service was asked to look at their use of single-use plastic items and the impact if they were removed from council use. 

It included straws from milk cartons in schools, plastic cable ties in transportation, refuse bags and swabs in environmental health and food sachets in catering. 

The report said exceptions need to be considered, such as the use of sterile sample bottles, gloves and shoe covers by council staff for statutory legal duties. 

Challenges could include the higher cost of alternatives, a loss of income from a drop in sales of items from vending machines or outlets, hygiene concerns from reusing items, and the difficulty in getting staff, pupils and parents to ‘buy in’ to the changes and change to refillable and reusable items.

Mr Gourlay said there were also ‘multi-year’ contracts in place for the purchase of some plastic items. 

Preventing waste, including single-use plastics, is a key theme of the Zero Waste Fife strategy which has already been approved. 

The first step will be the removal of plastic cups, cutlery, containers and straws used in council cafes or dining rooms, which Mr Gourlay said could be done with “minimum impact”.

To enable this to happen, a working group has been asked to “map” the volume, costs and impact of each plastic use with a report on progress to be delivered in February 2019.