From this week, passengers will be drinking from sustainable cartons when they buy their water on the train.
Newcastle-based Lumo have teamed up with North East enterprise Everdurance, who make the new water cartons. They use recycled materials which are then recycled again once they have been used.
The FirstGroup-owned operator promotes itself on its green credentials and this is the latest in its bid to make its catering more environmentally friendly.
Lumo has already replaced plastic wine and juice bottles, and recently started selling Flawsome juices, made from ‘wonky' fruit which would otherwise be wasted.
“it's a proud moment to see our cartons of water available on Lumo's high-speed services on the East Coast route.”
Callum Mather, Customer Success Director at Everdurance
Report says Lumo cuts carbon
In a report for Lumo, sustainability group Arup found that the operator saved 8 times the amount of carbon it produced.
In 2023, that was a saving of 60.6 kilotons of CO2, or the equivalent of 13,475 petrol cars.
Lumo aims to offer an affordable and green alternative to domestic flights between the English and Scottish capitals. Its fleet of class 803 EMUs are 100% electric-powered, which the company claims is 25 times better for the planet than taking the same journey by plane.
Transform Scotland partnership
The operator has also recently joined Transform Scotland, which promotes affordable and environmentally-friendly public transport.
“We already know that travelling by train is a very green way to get around and at Lumo our all-electric train fleet delivers the very best rail sustainability footprint, backed up by sustainability being at the heart of all we do from paper free work practices to more than 50 per cent of our food and drink menu being plant based.
“We are continuing to look at ways to further improve our sustainability credentials to continue offering our customers great value fares but also a super sustainable travel solution. Eliminating plastic bottles from our onboard service is another big step is making Lumo the best way to travel between London, Newcastle and Edinburgh, and we're delighted to be doing this with so many great partners including our supply chain provider Rail Gourmet.”
Martijn Gilbert, Managing Director of Lumo
“As proud eco-enthusiasts dedicated to providing sustainable solutions to businesses working to reduce their carbon footprint, we're very excited to be working with Rail Gourmet to help make Lumo journeys even greener and cleaner.”
Callum Mather, Customer Success Director at Everdurance
and how many of us still have GLASS bottled milk delivered to our homes?
The motto is re-use not recycle.
Reduce, re-use, recycle.
Don’t be fooled – I am an Environmental Consultant and a Chartered Waste Manager – this is greenwashing in its finest form. There is no nationally accessible infrastructure for collection and recycling of cartons and so they are no better than plastic bottles. When the Deposit Return Scheme rolls out in 2027 many public placed will inevitably have Reverse Vending Machines that collect plastic bottles and metal cans to return the deposit payable on every purchase ensuring they do get recycled ‘closed loop’.
It doesn’t need a national scheme if Lumo have made arrangements for used cartons to be collected on their trains and then they can send them to be recycled.
I do have doubts about how sustainable these cartons are though.
One of the cruise liners did this, they replaced a deal onboard where you bought 6×1.5 Ltr plastic bottles for £9 with 500ML tins for twice the price, everybody bought water ashore they still had loads of plastic bottles to deal with onboard but they are counted differently.
It would be easier for scientists to find recyclable plastic to make bottles out of.
Normal plastic bottles are already recyclable.