plasticbagfree Hebden Bridge -the launch!

Saturday 1 September saw the launch of the plasticbagfree Hebden Bridge initiative with stalls in St George’s square from 11am to 4pm. The Bag ladies handed out free cotton shopping bags coutesy of Recycle Calderdale and there was a chance for shoppers to make their own bags. The Co-op had a stall offering free fair trade fruit, chocolate and fruit juice. There was also busking and street theatre. The Trades Club gave a free screening of the inspirational film 'Message in the Waves' which was filmed by the plasticbagfree pioneer Rebecca Hoskings, resident of Modbury, the first town in Europe to go plasticbagfree.

Shops and traders, together with the Bag Ladies have been working on finding alternatives to the plastic bag, including shops asking for returnable deposits on bags, providing string bags, baskets and a newly launched cotton tote bag featuring the plasticbagfree Hebden Bridge logo which is available from Ruby Shoesday, the Co-op, Spirals and Organic House. Look out for the unique Hebden Bridge string bag! - soon to be available from Organic House.

Recycle Calderdale has provided funding for shop starter packs of vegetable starch based bags as an alternative to plastic bags which were provided to shops for the day. These are fully compostable bags which will biodegrade in home compost bins. A small charge will be made for these to cover costs (5p) and to discourage the use of them!

We can announce that we have finally sourced a type of bag that we are satisfied with!!

Bio Bags Limited can provide traders with a variety of sized carriers which are 100% plastic free, 100% compostable and 100% biodegradable.

The potato starch bag we originally sourced, was discovered at a late date to have a different make up to that we were led to believe - so we had to ditch the bag . We are determined to continue working on behalf of our traders to find the best product available when it becomes available.

The best thing is for consumers to take the matter into their own hands and come to the shops prepared!

Residents in the area should have received a leaflet about the initiative and a free Co-op fair trade cotton bag to get them started. “We are asking shoppers to come prepared with their own bags, or to be willing to pay 5p for a bag, to help the initiative work… we want to keep Hebden Bridge’s environment beautiful and we want to keep the town on the map as a great place to visit, live, shop in and work in. If we can all work together to make the town plasticbagfree then we’ll be Europe’s largest plastic bag free town” said the Bag Ladies, local residents who have worked together to pioneer the initiative. Residents are being asked to use any plastic bags they do have to sort their Kerbside recycling, rather than throwing them away. “The key is to reduce, reuse and recycle… so we can reduce bag use by using alternatives, reuse bags we do get, for example, to sort our Kerbside recycling, or to use them again and again, and then finally to recycle them.”

53 shops currently using plastic bags have pledged to support the initiative, 13 have opted for using recycled plastic bags, while over 25 shops already do not use plastic bags. You can find out more about the shops and the campaign on www.plasticbagfreehebdenbridge.co.uk, a website that’s been kindly sponsored by The Ethical Directory – the ethical website based in Hebden Bridge.
 

A few facts about plastic bags:

• A person uses a plastic carrier bag on average for only 12 minutes.
• A plastic bag can take between 500 to 1000 years to break down in the environment.
• In the UK at least 200 million plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches, streets and parks ever year.
• When a plastic bag enters the ocean it becomes a harmful piece of litter. Many marine animals mistake plastic bags for food and swallow them, with painful and often fatal consequences.

What can you do to reduce plastic shopping bag waste?

• Take a bag with you - go shopping with a cloth, jute or string bag
• String bags are great as they fit in your pocket or another bag, and you can carry lots of them, and they hold tons of stuff
• Refuse plastic bags if you’re offered them – use the bag you’ve got with you
• Help traders make the scheme work by not asking for a bag - you can do this in any town!