I’m feeling a very guilty - and cold - green girl at the moment.
Guilty for not writing on this lovely blog for soooo long!
And cold because our central heating has broken… brrrr!
The upside of this, however, is that we will have a heating system that is over 90% efficient by the time our plumbers have finished, rather than one which was 40-50% efficient and about 50 years old. Which is worth shivering for I’m sure!
On the guilty front, I hope I will be forgiven to some extent as I can promise you I have not been spending the time not writing on GGG lazing on the sofa (well, maybe if the heating was working I would have been…!).
Indeed, no, I have been working away on our all new and improved Ethical Weddings website along with my fellow GGG and ethical web designer extraordinaire, Vicky of Make Hay.
Take a look at the fruits of our labour at www.ethicalweddings.com and enjoy a good explore of the site.
If you’re an ethical bride or green groom, have ethical wedding related expertise or want to get involved in any way at all in turning the wedding industry green, get in touch, we’d love to hear from you!
But to get to the subject of my post today, I thought it was time to share the news that Brighton is - supposed to be - going plastic bag free.
I’m sharing this news with you in the hope that some Brightonians or fellow Sussexians (if there is such a word!) at any rate, will hear me as although I stumbled across the campaign for the removal of the Brighton plastic bag on the internet (and immediately contacted the group to let them know they had my full support!), sadly I see very little evidence that this has filtered down into the shops.
I am still offered a plastic bag nearly everywhere I go in Brighton, and I have seen no signs or flyers encouraging shoppers or shop keepers to “just say no”.
This campaign needs our support. If you are for a plastic free Brighton, check out plasticbagfreebrighton.co.uk and get in touch with Chloë to let them know we want this to work and will help in any way we can.
If Modbury can do it, why can’t we?
Take care (and just say no!)
Katie
Ethical Weddings
December 15th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Hi Katie,
The ethical wedding site looks great! Make Hay did an absolutely fantastic job - well done.
The Plastic Bag Free Brighton is a great idea, I know that Penney Poyzer is trying to do a similar campaign in West Bridgford in Nottingham. It will take a lot of hard work to encourage shops and also people to change their current habits of relying on plastic bags - but it will be worth it.
What amazes me though is that I still see comments all over the internet and in newspapers with people not understanding why plastic bags are a problem, they hear of campaigns to get rid of the bags but they dont see the link with climate change (as perhaps they dont link the fact that these bags are made from platic, which is a petroleum oil based product and we all know the environmental and political issues with oil! Also the production of such products require energy from most likely coal burning stations, they require transport etc)
It is so simple not to have a plastic bag and use a cotton / jute bag or even string bag instead. All it involves is being organised and carrying a few of these spare bags in your handbag. If people are driving to the supermarket (Not that I recomend or endorse that) to get their shopping then they can keep lots of reusable bags in their car. It’s just such a simple way to help people and planet.
Actually Katie, I think that I have been inspired now to attempt to do a campaign in my local area (though I live in what is classified as a ‘deprived area’ and such issues are not on most of my neighbours top agenda - but I will try to make it so) May even make some bags out of recycled material and do some sociable guerlla bagging - Moors Bag style!
December 19th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
The new site looks great. Good luck with the plastic bag ban. Although we have a ban here in San Francisco, there are still stores that will pack your items in plastic bags?! Either they don’t know about the ban or don’t care!!
January 8th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Hi Anna-Lisa and Arcadia, thanks for your comments. Let’s make 2008 the year of no plastic bags! I have another plastic-related post to follow shortly…
Happy New Year!