A MOTHER was outraged to see plastic water bottles being handed out free at a festival.

Claire Sumners is a regional representative at Surfers Against Sewage, an environmental charity, and manages her own Zero Waste Maman and Plastic Free Seaford campaigns.

She was horrified to see hundreds of plastic water bottles at Worthing Pride this year.

She said: “It’s just ridiculous.

“There should be no plastic bottles of water handed out at events any more.

“We all know what damage it does to the planet, it’s been known for ages that it takes more water to make a plastic bottle than what’s inside it.

“There should have been fountains.

“There has been a huge increase in people using reusable water bottles so the plastic ones are just so unnecessary.

“Surely they could have tried harder.

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“It’s almost as bad as seeing a baby seal being clubbed for its fur.”

For the first time this year, single-use plastic water bottles were banned at Glastonbury music festival, which attracts about 175,000 people.

Claire, from Seaford, said if large events were managing to stop using plastic then smaller town festivals certainly could too.

She said: “Councils also have a huge responsibility in this. They need to make more effort to put an end to plastic at events.

“To be honest it’s a win win situation for them, if there was less plastic then they will have less to clean up at the end of it.”

Claire tries her best to live a completely plastic-free life with her two children Jack, four and Matilda, three.

“I try to encourage, motivate and inspire others to do the same because it’s so important for our health and the planet’s health.

“It can be hard because a lot of things are wrapped in plastic or come in plastic, but the more we push and come up with different plastic-free ways of doing things the easier it will be.”

A spokeswoman for Worthing Pride said: “We did try and source an alternative to plastic but the cost was too much.

“We wanted to supply free water to our visitors. We did make sure we had a large amount of recycling bins recommended via our local council.

“However we are looking to change this for next year and would welcome any help on this.

“The Vivacious events bar however did use bio plastic glasses for drinks.”

A spokesman from Adur and Worthing councils said the use of single-use plastic bottles was not the councils’ responsibility and entirely up to the festival organisers.