Ventbag

Dear Ventnor Shopkeeper,

This letter is to tell you about the Ventbag project. You may have seen the recent articles in the local media about the project, and we must firstly apologise for not getting this information to you all first.

Inspired by the many other towns and cities in the UK that are doing similar things, a group of locals recently got together with the purpose of trying to make Ventnor the first town on the Island to be free from plastic carrier bags. We would like to tell you a bit about the issue, and why we feel it’s important.

The bad news about plastic

We have only had plastics since the 1950s, but the amount of plastic is growing at an alarming rate. The world makes over 200 million tonnes of plastic annually, and production is increasing at 3.5% per year. This means every twenty years the amount of plastic produced doubles. Around half of this is used for disposable items of packaging that are discarded within a year. 96% of the world’s plastic is not recycled. This debris is accumulating in landfill. The UK creates 2.8 million tonnes of plastic waste each year, and this figure is rising by 2% each year.

The trouble with plastics is that they don’t biodegrade – they’re not broken down by micro-organisms into substances that animals and plants can use. Instead they very slowly photodegrade – ultraviolet light breaks plastics down, but only into smaller and smaller bits of plastic. It’s anticipated that plastics will last for between 400 and 1000 years. A Ventnor fisherman recently found a crisp packet in his nets with the price printed in old pre-decimal money – so it had been around for at least 36 years!

The real problem is with what happens with all the plastic waste. In the UK at least 200 million plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches, streets and parks ever year, contaminating soil, waterways and oceans, and entering the food web if animals eat them. When a plastic bag ends up in the sea it becomes a harmful piece of litter. Many marine animals mistake plastic bags for food and swallow them, with painful and often fatal consequences. Worldwide 143 species are known to have become entangled in marine debris, including almost all of the world’s species of sea turtles.

In short, since the 1950s, unless we’ve burnt it, every piece of plastic that we have ever made, used and thrown away is still here on earth in one form or another, whether it’s in our homes, in landfill or in the environment – and it will be here for centuries to come.

Excess packaging is not just bad for the environment – it‘s bad for our pockets. In studies carried out in 2007 it has been estimated that excess packaging costs the average UK family about £470 a year.

The good news!

The good news is that at least 33 countries have already either completely banned plastic bags, discouraged their use through tax levies, or made it illegal for plastic bags to be given away at checkouts unless people pay for them. Many towns and cities in the UK have adopted a similar approach, or are planning to in the near future. We hope that Ventnor will be a pioneer for the whole Island, and that eventually the rest of the UK will follow. Ventnor Town Council and The Isle of Wight Council are very supportive of the project and see Ventnor as being the pilot town for the Island.

The plan

We hope to make Ventnor free from plastic carrier bags by September 2008, and we will need a lot of help and support from local businesses and their customers if we are going to achieve this. We are very keen to encourage people to use our wonderful local shops, as well as change the way they do it. We see this as an opportunity to promote the town, and want to make it easy for shopkeepers to be involved. A number of shops have already contacted us and have agreed to go plastic carrier bag free. We are listing these on the much-visited Ventbag website, with information promoting each shop. So here’s the plan. We’ll make contact with you all to discuss the issues, and to ask if you will support the project by not giving away plastic bags.

We will find out about biodegradable cornstarch bags, and let you know costs and contact details for suppliers. If you have seen the bags Godshill Organics use, you will see that they are strong carriers, look and perform like plastic, and have Godshill Organics logo printed on. They cost approximately 3.5p each and are available through Betapak in Rookley- phone 721100. In Modbury, the first town in the country to go plastic bag free, all the shopkeepers have agreed to encourage the use of re-usable bags, but to also stock these cornstarch carriers and to make a small charge for them. This is to discourage people from using them, because it is better to re-use bags than to keep using new bags, even biodegradable ones. For the same reason we would like the shopkeepers of Ventnor to agree to charge customers a small price for these bags. Of course this has the added benefit of reducing your business costs.

Before September, We’ll deliver one re-usable eco-friendly bag free to every home in Ventnor with an information sheet which tells people about the project, and asks them to re-use the free bag and other non-plastic bags they may have.

We are about to ask children at Ventnor Middle School to put forward designs for Ventnor’s own fabric shopping bag – the Ventbag. These will be available for sale and we hope will be popular with residents and tourists alike. This will go ahead once we have funding for the manufacture of the Ventbag.

There is already another bag project in the town, making shopping bags from recycled fabric. These are being given away free to people to discourage the use of plastic bags. Angie Pullin from the Ventnor Permaculture Group decided to start making these bags with the group, and anyone else who was interested, after seeing the idea on the Morsbags website. There are hundreds of towns all over the UK and the rest of world where people are making these bags. There is already a successful group in Bembridge who have made and given away over 200 bags. In January there will be a couple of community bag-making sessions. Anyone who can sew in a straight line can make a bag, so come and join us or work on your own or within an existing group or club. If you can’t sew you can still get involved by cutting out bags, pressing bags or making the tea to keep the baggers going. It’s fun and you can make new friends. If you have any unwanted cotton or other natural fabric you can donate to the project, please drop it off at The Ventnorian on Spring Hill. While there you can also pick up instructions for making a bag, or look it up on the Morsbags website – see below.

We hope you have a happy and prosperous 2008, and we also hope you will support this project, which we believe will benefit all of us in Ventnor, as well as people and wildlife the world over.

The Ventbag Project – www.ventbag.wordpress.com
Email: ventbag@btinternet.com
Phone – James Bradley 856802.
Postal address – 37 Lowtherville Rd, Ventnor, I.O.W. PO381AR
The Modbury website – www.plasticbagfree.com – Most of the plastic information came from here, and it‘s full of interesting stuff.
The Morsbags website – www.morsbags.com – we are registered as Ventnor Bags

Thank you, The Ventbag team.