– TDEG Whole Group Meeting – Wednesday 22nd September 2021
Andy Shelton, from Plastic Free Chesterfield, gave a talk on Zoom about how his community is progressing towards removing the use of single-use plastic (please click on the link below to see Andy’s full presentation).
Plastic Free Chesterfield – presentation
Andy explained that the “Plastic Free” accreditation process is a specific campaign organised by Surfers Against Sewage, in response to the dreadful environmental problem of single-use plastics. He emphasised both the environmental costs of the production of plastic, and the difficulties of both recycling and disposal.
He then described the journey towards acquiring plastic free accreditation with Surfers Against Sewage (now awarded to more than 800 communities). He stressed that this is ongoing work in Chesterfield, and that “every little bit every day helps“. Their central mantra is REFUSE, REUSE, RECYCLE. As part of this process, individuals, groups and businesses within their community worked to remove at least three single-use plastic items from their day-to-day activities.
Andy included links to several YouTube videos in his presentation, which are also well worth watching. You may have to copy and paste the links for these videos into your browser in order to watch them. The links may not work direct from the PDF file (although they might! ).
Discussion followed the presentation, particularly about how easy it would be to achieve something like this within our community. Everyone agreed that Andy’s talk had been both disturbing and inspiring in equal measure. It was agreed that we would find out if there are any similar projects nearby and try to assess the size of the project for a small community such as ourselves. It would need someone to lead on this specific project, and drive action forward. It was agreed that we should discuss the issue further at our next TDEG Committee meeting.
Even without a specific project, we could all adopt the idea of removing just three uses of single-use plastic from our own lives.
If anyone would like to get involved in helping us move away from single-use plastic, or if you would like to attend our next TDEG Committee meeting to join in that discussion, please email us at info@tdeg.org.uk .
