New Group Wants Ely To Become A Plastic Bag Free Zone

THE new Making Ely Greener Group is about to launch its first campaign, in an attempt to turn the city into a plastic-bag free zone.

To encourage citizens to dump the plastic, members of the group will be handing out thousands of free specially-designed reusable cloth shopping bags on the Market Place.

The scheme could eliminate the use of more than a million plastic bags in the city each year. Cash for the bags has been raised from sponsorship, so no public money is being used.

The bag - called "a bag for all reasons" -- has been specially designed, on one side of it will list five good reasons for using the cloth bag, and the logo "a bag for all reasons will be on the other side.

The Making Ely Greener Group has been set up under the umbrella of the City of Ely Perspective Group.

The launch is on Friday, October 24, when it is hoped that around 5,000 cloth bags will be put into circulation throughout the day.

"We will be handing out the bags to the public, and hope to get the bags into local stores, for them to use on the day," said Jean Pearson. "We will also encourage Ely traders to take more stock afterwards, rather than use plastic bags.

"Things are already on the move, you see a lot more people taking reusable bags to the supermarket rather than use plastic bags, and we hope to encourage shoppers to do that even more.

"This is a good way of promoting the city," added Jean, "it will also be great for the environment, because most plastic bags finish up in landfill."

Supermarkets Tesco and Waitrose have been in discussion with the Making Ely Greener Group, and it is hoped that more initiatives will be forthcoming in the future.

"This is our first stab, to get ourselves launched," said Jean. "We are planning more recycling initiatives in the future.