Plastic Bag Free Penrith

Lord Henley replied on 1/9/11 - see attachment below:

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On 2nd October 2010, the Plastic Bag Free Penrith team took to the streets, setting up a Bag Swap stall to swap shoppers plastic bags for a new PACT cotton bag.  We gave away all our bags...

We also asked shopper to sign a petition to the House of Commons calling for a charge to be introduced in England on single use plastic carrier bags.  Almost 500 signatures were collected on the day, with more collected later; the petition was handed in by our MP Rory Stewart.

Of course in the ideal world we wouldn't be dealing with issues around plastic bag disposal in the first place, but given there are still plenty of them about (!) how about some innovative ideas for re-using bags for knitting or making jewellery?

Just a few ideas here from a quick search on google / YouTube - I'm sure there are plenty more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o4jIUcSo8g

Nigel has passed on this press cutting: 

I've just spotted that Italy has a complete plastic bag ban starting tomorrow:

"Italian retailers are banned from providing consumers polyethylene bags starting January 1st, making way for a change in consumer behaviour and the use of reusable cloth or plastic sacks, or bags made from biodegradable plastic or paper."

"According to Reuters, 'Italian critics say polyethylene bags use too much oil to produce, take too long to break down, clog drains, and easily spread to become eye sores and environmental hazards.'"

At the Vitality of Penrith event this evening, Peter Clarke had a good suggestion for the Plastic Bag Free Penrith project.

We've previously been in touch with the Penrith Co-op about their use of plastic bags for their home supermarket deliveries.  They have smallish open crates with hooks to hang plastic bags with a customer's shopping.  We had previously thought of making custom returnable cardboard boxes to fit inside the crates.