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Plastic Free Lewes

I attended a "Plastic Free Lewes" meeting last week, where members of the community come together to take action on single use plastic in the town I live. Amongst the group of 30 or so, were local residents, business owners and local politicians. It was an inspiring, inclusive evening of sharing and planning of ideas and updates on action taken since the last . The initiatives currently in progress include education packs for local schools. Establishing water refill stations around town and at local events. One group is focusing on putting pressure on local supermarkets, another on helping retailers to make steps towards being more plastic free. Apparently numbers attending the meetings has grown month on month, since the group was established earlier this year. It was encouraging to see the progress made by the group so far, but there's still a long way to go.

I'm pleased to have made it along, feel inspired to get involved and aim to keep in touch with the group via social media platforms whilst on our travels.

Facts about plastic pollution:

• The world is now producing nearly 300 million tons of plastic every year, half of which is for single use. More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year. • Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute. • A plastic bag has an average ‘working life’ of 15 minutes - but could last 500 years. • 14% of all litter comes from beverage containers. • Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.

Source: Plastic Oceans

Plastic is choking our planet and poisoning our food chains. We want to help stop this by dramatically cutting unnecessary plastic use across our town, encouraging the use of permanent or eco-friendly alternatives to single-use plastics, lobbying our councils to make changes that can help cut plastic use and pollution and making it easier for everyone to reduce the amount of plastic in their lives.

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