Welcome to Modbury. Just don't ask for a plastic bag
John Vidal, environment editor
Saturday April 28, 2007
The Guardian
Modbury is the quintessential small West Country town. Set in a
among rolling Devon hills just a few miles from the sea, it
has 761 households, a high street, two churches, a primary school,
three pubs, two takeaways, a surgery, a small supermarket and 40 or
so small shops.
Not much happens in Modbury. Some say the last time the peace was
disturbed was in 1643 when Roundheads and Cavaliers fought in its
streets. But a revolution of another kind will take place on
Monday. At 8am it will become the first plastic bag-free town in
the British Isles.
Spurred by environmental fervour and growing concern about the
100bn or more plastic bags thought to be littering the world and
clogging the seas, the town's 43 traders have unilaterally declared
their independence from the plastic bag and have pledged to no
longer sell, give away or otherwise provide them to anyone in
Modbury for a minimum of six months.
No one knows how much it will cost them or the town, or indeed
whether Modburians and the holiday-makers who visit the town will
rise in revolt.
But from now on, if you buy olives from Adam in the deli, a steak
from Simon the butcher, or a sweet and sour from Phil in the
Chinese, they will come wrapped in corn starch paper. Helen in the
ironmongers, Sue in the gallery and Sarah in the gift shop are
moving to cotton. If tourists nip into the Co-op for ice cream,
they will be given a cloth bag. Modbury will be full of
biodegradable, organic, fairtrade, unbleached, recycled carrier
bags of every description - except plastic.
So committed are the retailers that they have commissioned 2,000
official Modbury bags, which could soon be collectors' items. Made
in Mumbai, India, they will sell for £3.95.
The idea of a plastic bag-free town comes from Rebecca Hosking, a
young Modbury-born-and-raised wildlife camerawoman who went to the
Pacific last year to film marine life for the BBC but experienced
horrendous plastic bag pollution.
"It really affected me," she said. "I have never cried behind
a
camera before. I'm not a blubby person. But it broke my heart to
see animals entangled in plastic, albatrosses dying after eating
plastic, dolphins trailing plastic bags and seals trapped in
discarded fishing nets and plastic debris. The sea is now like a
trash can and the plastic is there for ever. It doesn't go away for
hundreds of years. What I witnessed was just so unnecessary. All
this damage is simply caused by our throwaway living."
She returned to Devon, went diving and found the seas there also
full of plastic. "So I booked the Brownston art gallery in the
centre of Modbury, invited all the traders and showed them my film.
At the end all that were there said they would give up plastic bags."
"It was very moving," said Sue Sturton from the Brownston art
gallery. "I thought people would turn a blind eye to something
happening as far away as Hawaii. But I was wrong. We have a
responsibility here. People go to the beaches here and we as
shopkeepers are just handing out plastic shopping bags."
"Rebecca massaged us. But it didn't need much," said Jane, who runs
the St Luke's hospice charity shop which is turning to paper and
cloth bags. The other traders are buying bags for her to use in
wrapping customers' purchases. "I think it could work elsewhere,
but this is definitely not a normal town at all."
"They've got it now," said Ms Hosking, who gave up her film work
two months ago to concentrate on turning the town plastic bag-free.
"It seems to have really brought people together. The shops have
sent all their unused plastic bags to a Wholesale in West Yorkshire
where they are being made into plastic chairs and hopefully other
durable goods, and they have set up plastic bag amnesty points
where people can bring in the hundreds of bags that they keep under
the kitchen sink. Now it's just a question of seeing if people
accept it. We are all trembling now. To be a pioneer is pretty scary."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1717476.ece