Southport and Sefton join the Plastic Free Community and pledge to ditch the Single Use Plastics

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Sefton Council has pledged to join the Plastic Free Community movement and strengthen its commitment to ditching Single Use Plastics and cutting plastics waste.

In 2018, Sefton Council passed a motion to reduce the use of Single Use Plastics in order to protect our Borough, particularly our coastal environment.

Since then the Council has made significant progress:  

  • Requiring new concessions stalls (e.g. ice cream vans) to be plastic free – no longer using plastic straws, stirrers, cups, cutlery, etc and only selling bottles which are 100% recyclable. 
  • Providing guidance to support businesses and community groups to reduce Single Use Plastics.
  • Consider Single Use Plastics in tender evaluation (social value) on high value purchases.
  • Promoting the reduction of Single Use Plastics (including balloon/lantern releases) within our communities, including taking part in the recent ‘Plastic Free July’ campaign.
  • Removing single use plastic items, such as tea and coffee sachets, from our office spaces.

The Council has strengthened its original commitment and will build on the good work which has been done to date as it now joins the Plastic Free Community movement.

This is a community network across the UK working together to avoid and remove  Single Use Plastics from beaches and green spaces.

 

Cllr Diane Roscoe, Sefton’s Representative on the Plastic Free Community Steering Group said:

“Sefton Council has made great strides in phasing out Single Use Plastics in our Borough, but we all have to work together to reduce them even further.

“In Sefton, we are only too aware of the plastics that end up at our coast. Not only are Single Use Plastics wasteful and significantly carbon emitting to make and to dispose of but they are also damaging and dangerous to wildlife.”

 

Cllr Paulette Lappin, Cabinet Member for Regulatory, Compliance and Corporate Services added:

“Plastic is a material designed to last for hundreds of years but we now make things that are used just once and thrown away. A plastic bag is used, on average, for 12 minutes, but it’s likely to be around when our great-great-great grandchildren are born!

“We must go further to ditch the plastic!”