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Plastic bags and the environment
Clean City, Clean Sea: working towards a plastic bag free city
Clean City, Clean Sea is the council's campaign that aims to eliminate plastic bags and excess packaging across the city. The council, local businesses, residents and visitors can all contribute to making Brighton & Hove a plastic bag-free city and to keeping plastic out of the sea.
What's the problem?
Over 13 billion plastic bags are used in the UK every year. Each bag is used on average for only 12 minutes before being thrown away. At least 200 million of these bags end up as litter on our streets, parks, rivers, beaches and the sea.
As a city by the sea, we all have a special responsibility to prevent plastic waste from getting into our oceans.
What can I do?
The biggest and best contribution that you can make to eliminating plastic waste is to reduce the amount you use.
- Say 'no' to plastic bags
- Use eco-friendly bags, shopping bags or 'bags for life'
- Choose products that have less packaging
Try to reuse packaging and plastic bags whenever possible and ask your local supermarket to use packaging that can be easily recycled.
What is the council doing to work towards a plastic bag-free city?
The council does not have the legal power to ban plastic bags. But we can encourage traders and shoppers to use alternatives, lobby government to change legislation and raise awareness of the problem through campaigning and education.
- Bag for life scheme
- Environmental education
- Helping local businesses become plastic bag-free
- Changing legislation?
- LGA packaging study
- Trading standards - excess packaging and bogus claims
- Research into alternatives
- Plastic bag-free week
- Plastic bag-free news
Clean City, Clean Sea - bag for life scheme
The council is phasing out plastic bags in its retail outlets and has introduced a bag for life. The bag is created using a material made from recycled plastic bags. It is available in council shops at Jubilee Library and the Royal Pavilion and can also be ordered wholesale by local businesses. For more information see our bag for life page.
Environmental education
The council's award winning environmental education work now has an increased focus on plastic litter and the sea. For example, local primary schools created an animated film 'More plastic than plankton' to highlight the problem of plastic waste in our oceans. The film was screened in November 2008 and will feature in an exhibition at Jubilee Library in 2009.
To find out more about this and other exciting projects see our environmental education pages.
Helping local businesses become plastic-bag free
We plan to organise a seminar for local retailers to look at the alternatives to plastic bags. We will share the results of our research and give advice on the environmental impacts of the different options.
We also plan to invite the city's main supermarkets to a 'supermarket summit' to find out how they can contribute to a plastic bag-free city.
We want to encourage as many local traders to get involved as possible. So in view of the current economic climate we will arrange both these events at a time when traders will be able to focus on this issue.
Local businesses can order our stylish 'Clean City, Clean Sea' bag for life wholesale. See our bag for life page for more details.
Changing legislation?
The council has pressed the government for action on reducing plastic bag use and lobbied local MPs to call for legislation.
Government has now launched a new campaign on reusing bags and is encouraging people to get a habit - Get A Bag Habit.
Leading supermarkets have agreed a 50 per cent cut in the number of carrier bags given out by spring 2009. Read the DEFRA news story about the government's agreement with the major supermarket chains.
Local Government Association packaging study
A study by the Local Government Association LGA, has found that while the total weight of supermarket food packaging has reduced in the past two years, almost 40 per cent still cannot be easily recycled. Read more about the LGA packaging study.