25 February 2018
How much non-recyclable plastic do we bring home with our weekly shop?
Local families who volunteered to take part in a Green Party community-based project last December were amazed by the amount of plastic packaging their Christmas festivities had generated. Keen to carry on and learn more about what they were bringing home in their day-to-day shopping, they have spent the month of February collecting up the non-recyclable plastic generated by their supermarket visits.
This plastic will be gathered up and taken to 53 Jessopp Road for a community event from 1-3pm on Saturday 3rd March when interested visitors can call in and see what has been collected. There’ll be a Help Desk for people who are unsure as to whether a particular item is recyclable or not – and who hasn’t wondered whether something should go in their recycling bin or not?
Other activities will include a ‘Best and Worst’ examples competition, a ‘Silliest thing wrapped in plastic’ display, (with a prize) and a display of alternatives to plastic packaging. There’ll also be an opportunity to design a public leaflet for people to hand in to local supermarkets asking them how they are proposing to cut down the amount of throw-away plastic they use.
Green Party City Councillor Sandra Bogelein said:
“There is a growing awareness of the environmental damage our increasing use of plastic and its careless disposal is causing. Plastic can be found everywhere, even in remote areas of the world such as Antarctica. As well as cleaning up what we’ve already disposed of we must also cut down the amount of plastic we use and recycle more. We must find alternatives to single-use and non-recyclable plastics and stop polluting our planet with our man-made rubbish.”
Norwich Green Party has been running the ‘Plastic in our Environment’ campaign to reduce the amount of waste plastic that is produced, encourage plastic recycling and find alternatives to plastic packaging and single-use plastic items. Green councillors put motions seeking to end the use of single-use plastics in their workplaces to both City and County Councils in the autumn of 2016 and these were passed unanimously.
Photo Opportunity
2pm on Saturday 3rd March at 53 Jessopp Road, Norwich NR2 3JF
