Football stadiums, concert venues, summer festivals, pub / beer gardens, and even Buckingham Palace garden parties use plastic glasswaresupplied by Regalzone and its distributors. These customers return to usyear-on-year because of our low prices, the choice we offer, and the level of service we deliver.

RELIABILITY

Regalzone have built a reputation for reliability overtwenty years. Put simply, we will deliver when we say we will. When you send usan order for plastic glasses we will arrange a delivery with you and you canthen concentrate on the more demanding aspects of running an event. On the day,we are easily contactable and will resolve any issues or concerns you may have.

ADVICE

With more than two hundred different types of plasticglasses to choose from and plenty of experience, we are in a position to adviseand make suggestions. For example:

• When serving wine, we suggest one-piece plasticwine glasses because bar staff won’t want to fit the bases to two piece glasseswhen there is a queue of people waiting.
• If possible, go for one type of plastic for allyour plastic glasses. This makes them much easier to recycle.
• If serving drinks outside in one location on aregular basis, it may be more cost effective to select hardwearingpolycarbonate glassware.

PRINTING & BRANDING

In contrast to what some people may tell you, there are nominimum quantities for getting printed plastic glasses. In addition the leadtimes are not always measured in months. However, as with all printing, it isgenerally true that the more you print the more cost effective it is per unit.

How Much Does It Cost?

The answer will depend on the type of plastic glass, thenumber of colours to be used, the number of positions and the quantity to bedone. The print can cost as little as 1-2 pence per unit if you are prepared toprint in pallet quantities. If you want to keep costs down, our advice is toprint as many as you can in as few colours as you can.

How Long Will It Take?

Sometimes it is possible to deliver printed plastic glassesin as little as two weeks.  However youshould plan on it being six weeks to take account of busy periods, largequantities, and to get the best price.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS

These days, most people will be concerned about theenvironmental effects of using plastic disposable glasses.  However, the issues are more complex than manypeople realise.

Plastic Glasses Are Bad for the Environment

If plastic glasses are disposed of as litter or end up in landfill,they do not degrade and the resources used to create them are wasted. However,all plastics can be recycled to make new products or incinerated to makeenergy. Increasingly, most local authorities will accept plastic glasses intheir recycling bins. Commercial recyclers are usually happy to accept thembecause plastic glasses are not contaminated with solid food waste.

So the answer is to recycle and environmental concerns canbe useful addressed by providing separate bins for plastic glasses that providea ‘cleaner’ waste stream for the recycling industry.

What About Biodegradable Plastic Glasses

The polymer used to make biodegradable plastic is calledPLA. The raw material for PLA is corn starch. Regalzone have a range ofbiodegradable plastic glasses made from PLA but there is a debate as to howenvironmentally friendly plastic glasses really are.

The case for PLA is approximately as follows: It is biodegradable and that must be good; it is not made from oil, and that must begood. However it is not that straightforward.

PLA is not biodegradable like a banana skin or apple core.It will not decompose as litter or on a domestic compost heap. In theory it canbe disposed of in a commercial composting facility but in practice, many localauthorities will reject it.

So what tends to happen is that they end up in land fill(where they biodegrade like a leather boot) or they get innocently added to theplastic recycling waste stream, which they contaminate and render useless.

In a recent article in letsrecycle.com, Lee Marshall, chairof the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee, said: 'It is difficultenough telling residents what bottles we want for recycling, it would be evenworse if we were then saying 'and also these need to be put in the compostingbin.”

Regalzone do sell ‘biodegradable’ plastic glasses made fromPLA as well as regular plastic glasses, so we have no agenda on this issue.However we feel that this product is widely understood and that it is importantto inform customers as well as ‘market’ to them. For more information on thisissue please look at the other articles in this section as well as this article from The Guardian.