Ban the Plastic Bag campaign.

We, Greening Petersfield, decided that we would like to see Petersfield plastic bag free and launched our campaign in June 2008 with a public meeting.

We decided to make plastic carrier bags our first project for a number of reasons. The main reason being their CO2 contribution, especially as it is unnecessary as there are many alternatives for carrying shopping. There is also the problem of littering and hazard to wildlife. Details of which can be found (here). We also considered that as there was lots of publicity at the time nationally it would be a good phase 2 project to cut our teeth on.

We announced our meeting in the press, put up posters and invited all the shops in Petersfield with a letter. The meeting was well attended with representatives from across the whole community, including the public, a range of traders and the Mayor. The aims of the meeting were to illustrate the problems and alternatives of plastic carrier bags, encourage the public to use alternatives and persuade traders to join the campaign.

In addition to this we gave all the shops a poster to hang up near their checkout. This was followed up with further press releases and leaflet handouts. We then surveyed the shops to determine how well our campaign was going, with a few simple questions, these can be seen (here). The survey was very positive, with some shops talking enthusiastically of their support.

The full results can be found (here). Overall we determined that Petersfield was 50% plastic carrier free, with Tesco (with the biggest market share) reporting a 50% reduction in plastic carrier bags. Although this is fantastic I do not think we can attribute it all to ourselves as other campaigns were running at similar times, the timing helped.

Our campaign has not ended there though. In December Tesco allowed us to have a stand in their lobby and hand out free cotton bags. This was a tremendous success with a mostly positive response from the public, we handed out 629 (everything we had). The staff at our local Tesco are very supportive of our campaign and commented that they would like to see more action taken on this issue.

Overall most people and traders would like an end to the plastic carrier bag, so it is only a matter of time before we get there. One of the main problems people have is remembering their bags, which we could focus the next phase of the project on.

The government is also expected to take action on this issue which will hopefully bring an end to plastic carrier bags. If carrier bags are banned it does not mean our efforts have been wasted as all the campaigns going on around the country have highlighted this issue and placed it firmly on the agenda.
We have further actions planned to push the campaign forward further, watch this space!