McDonald's will stop using plastic straws across all of its UK and Ireland restaurants, replacing them with paper alternatives from September.

The announcement comes after the fast food chain said in March that it would remove plastic straws, of which it uses around 1.8 million every day in Britain.

All 1,361 restaurants will begin the roll-out from September, with the process to be completed next year.

McDonald's said it had found two suppliers to meet its needs for paper straws, the start-up Transcend Packaging based in Wales, and Huhtamaki, a global company which will produce the straws at its plant in Belfast.

The move comes amid increasing pressure on companies to reduce the amount of single-use plastic they use, because of concerns over plastic pollution in the, oceans where items such as straws end up harming, and often killing, wildlife like turtles, birds and fish.

McDonald’s, as the largest fast-food chain in the world, had been urged to lead the way and ban plastic straws across all of its 36,000 outlets.

But other UK food chains have already ditched plastic straws from their restaurants.