Have a green Christmas

Achaleven Primary School in Connel, Argyll, have been promoting green, sustainable, package and rubbish-reduced living.

Last Tuesday, 24 November, the school put on a coffee evening themed Have a green Christmas.

The children sold eco-friendly bags and cards as well as gifts to promote their eco work. Head Teacher Sharon Burt and her team put on a fantastic spread of baking; there were also a lucky dip and a raffle with great prizes.

Despite really horrible weather, the room was packed with parents and friends.

All money raised will be put towards further developing the school's garden.

(© Photo: Caroline Askew, The GRAB Trust)

Sustainable Oban / Oban Plastic Bag Free! were happy to be present with displays promoting the two organisations. Thank you for your hospitality, Achaleven.

Plasticbag.org.uk - Sustainable Oban Meeting: Jan 23, 2009

Hello again

This is a quick reminder that the
next Sustainable Oban meeting at the Glencruitten Church Hall, Oban

Friday, 23 January, 2009, 7 to approx. 9pm

will include an update on our Initiative to get Oban Plastic Bag Free!

Everyone's most welcome!


Finally, your blogger browsed the web in search of facts on the production of plastic bags.

Plasticbag.org.uk -- "the campaign to reduce the effects of plastic bags on our world" -- is a website that may well be worth your visit.

Cheerioh!

Oban Plastic Bag Free! on Oban FM radio

Oban Plastic Bag Free! is happy to acknowledge being given some excellent airtime on Oban FM radio this Sunday, December 14, 2008, from about 10:30 to 11AM. News editor Coll MacDougall invited Oban Plastic Bag Free! co-facilitator, Margaret Powell-Joss, along to chat with Councillor Roddy McCuish and Adam Hughes, President of the Oban Allotments Association, a sister organisation under the Sustainable Oban umbrella.

In the course of the radio chat, we highlighted the negative consequences of plastic degraded into microparticles that then attract toxins which mimic human hormones -- contributing towards reducing human fertility. We also addressed the issue of plastic pellets and microparticles being ingested by marine organisms and animals -- fish, mammals, birds, whose intestines are filled with plastic rather than food.
For more on this subject, view the video on the Marine Conservation Society website.

Councillor Roddy McCuish expressed his wholehearted endorsement of the Oban Plastic Bag Free! Initiative, asking each and every consumer to re-use bags and to stay away from non-biodegradable plastic. We appreciate his suppport and can only join him in his appeal.

Thank you, Oban FM, for providing this platform -- we will be back on ObanFM after our next meeting on January 23, 2008. More about that in our next post.

SAMS Endorsement of the Oban Plastic Bag Free! Initiative

We are happy and proud to publish two endorsement messages from the Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory of SAMS, The Scottish Association for Marine Science.

They came in on October 31, 2008, and are published here with permission:

The message from Prof. Laurence Mee, the Director of SAMS, reads as follows:

"You are entirely right that free plastic bags are a bane of modern society and are causing untold environmental damage. It is amazing that the example of Ireland to charge for plastic bags has not been followed in the UK.
I am pleased to see that supermarkets in Oban offer alternatives but we need to go one step further and charge for the plastic ones!
I fully support your campaign and trust that my colleagues will do the same.
Laurence"


The message from the SAMS Activities Manager & Lecturer in Marine Life Sciences, Dr Anuschka Miller, reads:

"further to Laurence's email, a petition about your cause is currently making its way around the staff at SAMS, finding many supporters.
I moved to the UK from Germany some 17 years ago when free plastic bags started to disappear there. It has always perplexed me how slow the UK – which has otherwise become my home of choice – is in adopting even the simplest and most obvious solutions to environmental problems.
These relatively small gestures can make a huge difference to people's behaviour across many activities and I wish you and us all every success with your initiative!
Anuschka"

Oban Plastic Bag Free! at Oban's ABREEF Environment Fair

The Oban Plastic Bag Free! initiative was well represented at this year's ABREEF Oban & Lorn Environment Fair, 25th & 26th September, 2008. Thank you, ABREEF , Sustainable Oban and GRAB Trust, for giving us a platform to voice and illustrate our concerns about plastic waste in general and plastic bags in particular.
We spoke to lots of pupils, teachers and members of the public and found that there are large numbers of people who want to see plastic bags banished from our lives.

A few visual impressions of the event:

Our stall with stark images and tactile examples of sound, sustainable, responsibly-sourced alternatives.

Oban Plastic Bag Free! co-initiator and campaigner, Astrid Horward, smiling at the interest by pupils and the general public.
In front of her, some examples of sensible, sustainable, 100% biodegradable and/or 100% compostable products.

Campaigner Astrid talking to a member of the public.

There really is no excuse for oil-based plastic bags. Look at these examples of traditional alternatives from local producers:

Fiona MacDougall's baskets: a blue and white basket gives new lease of life to plastic bags; it sits atop a traditional crab creel.
Pip Weaser in action and almost eclipsed by samples of fellow basket weavers' work (members of the Scottish Basketmakers' Circle).

Finally, Annabel Gregory's hand-knitted and hand-crocheted bags made from sustainably sourced jute (natural dyes).

Our presence at the ABREEF Fair was a success. Most of the people we spoke to were in favour of a ban on plastic bags.

When they were shown the alternatives, lots of people asked, "But why, if such great alternatives are on the market, don't supermarkets provide them to us?!"
Our response was that there has not been the pressure from above or below, and the alternatives are costlier. Would people be prepared to pay for alternatives? The majority response was, yes. And a lot of people already take their own bags to do their shopping.

So let's keep the pressure up! Thank you for collecting lots of signatures to petition the Scottish government to Ban Plastic Bags.