The Stroud-based plastic-free community group, Action on Plastic (formerly Stroud District Action on Plastic), is reaching out across Gloucestershire.
Thanks to generous funding from the Summerfield Charitable Trust and the Laura Kinsella Foundation, the group has recently launched a brand new website – www.actiononplastic.org – and is working with other plastic-free groups and organisations across the county to share tools and resources to reduce the county’s plastic footprint. The group has also produced a new short film, directed and filmed by local cameraman, Peter Moseley of Bakehouse TV – the film is viewable from the website’s front page and explains the background to the group’s work, as well as showcasing some of the many local opportunities to shop plastic-free.
Action on Plastic seeks to raise a wider awareness of the polluting impacts of the plastics life cycle – in particular, single use plastics, which have only a brief useful life but a long environmental impact – and the solutions that are available.
The new website holds a wealth of other information about how to live, study and work in Gloucestershire plastic-free, including detailed information about where to shop with minimal packaging, and how to recycle some of those trickier items that are not covered by local council schemes. A regular blog covers specific aspects of life without plastic, including a recent piece on plastic-free sport, featuring our local green sports heroes, Forest Green Rovers.
In July 2020, Action on Plastic received the ‘Plastic Free Community’ accreditation for Stroud district from marine conservation charity, Surfers Against Sewage. The group worked with local individuals, schools, businesses and district and other local councillors to put in place the five-point plan required to gain the award. Stroud remains one of the first districts to have been awarded Plastic Free Community status by the charity, in recognition of the work the district has done to start reducing the impact of single-use plastic on the environment.
Group leader Claudi Williams says: “I’m delighted that we’ve now been able to expand our work further across the county. People are increasingly aware of the damaging impact of the plastics cycle on our climate and our environment, and they are looking for ways to live without the need for it. There are solutions readily available across Gloucestershire, and we want to help individuals, groups and businesses to access them, working with other local groups wherever they exist. The changes we make – however small – influence those around us, so we can all have an important part to play in this shift towards a lower waste, more sustainable way of living. So often, the solutions to this issue are also beneficial to the local economy, so the county only stands to gain from this positive transition.”
