WHY CREATE A PLASTIC FREE COMMUNITY?
The majority of the plastic pollution our volunteers find on beaches are avoidable, single-use items. Straws, stirrers, plastic bottles, plastic bags, disposable lighters, plastic cotton bud sticks, condiment sachets and more.
These all have an upstream solution to prevent their presence downstream on our beaches and in our oceans. This is what Plastic Free Communities is designed to do.
It is the only step-by-step community framework, uniting individuals, schools, businesses, community groups and local government to drive action on reducing local use of avoidable single-use plastics. – Surfers Against Sewage
Clean Coast Outer Hebrides is working closely with Surfers Against Sewage and Parley to turn the Outer Hebrides into a Plastic-Free Community. It’s a 5 stage process, that in the short term is challenging to implement, but one that will provide long term benefits to local businesses and community groups!
For more information on supporting the vision of the Outer Hebrides as a Plastic-Free Community, contact hello@cleancoastoh.com.
For many years now the oceans have been used as industrial dumping grounds. Trash that washes up on the coastline of the Outer Hebrides, such as this massive net (20/01/2019), is unsightly, hazardous, and expensive to remove. #plasticfreecommunities
THINGS YOU CAN DO!!!
Simply spend just two minutes doing a litter pick down on the beach, or if you can’t get to a beach then a litter pick anywhere will help to improve your environment.
Tag us in your beach cleans online using #cleancoastoh, or share with us in our Facebook group and Twitter.
Pick Up Three Pieces was started and continues to be lead by Orkney school children who want to take responsibility for removing some of the litter that is building up on their local beaches. They are finding out it that it is a global problem seriously affecting animals. It entangles them or is mistaken for food by them. Plastic bags look like jellyfish to a turtle and marine mammals and birds are often entangled in floating debris.
Use a Reusable Water Bottle
Reusable water bottles are lead and BPA free, which is beneficial to you and your families’ well-being. By switching to a reusable water bottle, Hebrideans can save money, help the environment by lowering the amount of plastic waste in the Outer Hebrides, and keep their families and communities safer.
LET’S FREE WHERE WE LIVE FROM SINGLE-USE
The Plastic Free Communities Manifesto
Because plastic is extraordinarily useful, versatile, and cheap material it is everywhere. Plastic disposed of in a careless ways chokes our streets, parks and playgrounds. If plastic is on our streets today, then it’s in our rivers tomorrow, and in our beaches and oceans forever.
The solution is that together, we must reduce our addiction to avoidable single-use plastic, and change the system that produces it.
We can make sure each of us understands that we can change this, whoever we are and wherever we live.
But we can only do all of this together. That’s why we believe in working with Surfers Against Sewage and Parley to create Plastic Free Communities.
Plastic Free Communities is a community network across the UK that’s tackling single-use plastic from the beach, all the way back to the brands and businesses who create it. We’re on a journey to unite communities in the fight against single-use plastics, wherever we find them.
It starts here and it starts with us. And if you’re still reading this, that means you too. Join us and help free where we live from single-use, one plastic bottle at a time!