... to Unsustainable Carrier Bags!'
Residents
of Forest Row fed up with the amount of waste created, are doing something
about it. The ‘it’s all in the bag’ group has produced a durable shopping bag
made from jute and printed with a water based ink.
You will
find leaflets distributed in village shops advising on how to avoid using
disposable carrier bags. One way is to bring old plastic bags to ‘bag banks’
being hosted in some of the shops. Shoppers who have forgotten their own bag
can take one out of the ‘bank’ to reuse. These shops will also supply ‘Rethink
Rubbish’ bags from East Sussex County Council, to loan to customers, who may
return them to any participating shop.
Rydons
Development, the largest employer in the village, is housing a ‘bag bank’ for
their staff to use. Other local businesses are being encouraged to do the same.
A Forest
Row bag will be given away free! to the first 50 people who turn up at the
Community Centre Market on the 2nd February at 10:00 am and again to
the first 50 people on the next Saturday 9th February from 11am at
the Mansion Market at Michael Hall School.
At the end
of the give-away, the bags will be sold for £3.00 each.
In the U.K. we use an
average of 300 plastic bags each, a year. A bag is used for approximately only
12 minutes before being thrown away! These bags then end up as landfill or
litter, where they contaminate the soil, waterways, oceans and animals.
Breaking
the habit of using disposable bags is a small step towards creating a
sustainable way of life. Buying and using the Forest Row shopping bag shows we
care and helps spread the word beyond our village, like dropping a pebble in
the pond!
Let’s make
2008 the year Forest Row stops using disposable carrier bags for good.
Contact
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for more information!
Wonderful to be shopping in Forest Row yesterday and see only people bringing their own bags - well done to Cyrnels Bakery for blazing the trail with bag charging with the 5p going to charity. I was asked if I would like a bag in Lloyd's chemist yesterday and suggested perhaps their branch contact head office to get the go ahead for having a bag "bank". They could pilot the scheme for Lloyd's. |
