The village that proves you CAN live without plastic
It’s scrapped plastic pintas, straws, cutlery and sauce sachets in a bid to become . . .
THe village of Aberporth, on the magnificent Ceredigion coast in West Wales, is sprawling, windswept and a good 50 minutes’ drive from the nearest train station. For centuries, it was a bustling fishing village; a launchpad for herring fisherman and seafaring heroes.
today, there is just one fishing boat left — a sunshine yellow trawler called ‘ Shaun the Prawn’ — a graveyard full of mariners, a couple of shops, a deserted-looking hotel, one pub and an ever-shrinking population.
In summer, this is an exquisite spot, but on a winter afternoon, with villagers hurrying against the chill in knitted jumpers, it is not at its best. It smells of coal smoke and sea spray. the gulls are squealing, the beach is empty and the cafes are closed until easter.
So it doesn’t seem like the plucky pioneer, the leader, even, of Britain’s anti-plastic campaign. Or the sort of place that could turn the tide on the millions of tons of single-use plastic we dump in our oceans and rivers each year, systematically poisoning our marine life and, in turn, our planet and ourselves.
But it is. Aberporth has been all over the news recently, in newspapers around the world and shared on social media, as its crusade to become Wales’s — and one of Britain’s — first plastic-free village has snowballed.
Because while others fret and frown about the perils of plastic, Aberporth people are actually doing something about it — and at some financial cost to themselves.
their campaign is even more crucial now that China has announced it will not take plastic from the UK to recycle, as part of its ban on ‘foreign garbage’.
Britain has been shipping up to 500,000 tons of plastic for recycling in China every year, but the trade has been stopped, leading to concerns that the UK will not be able to process all the recycling.
In Aberporth, Oliver Box, whose family run the Ship Inn, has ditched plastic straws, sauce sachets and cutlery. Such items make up a fifth of coastal litter.
Across the bay at the London House Stores, Mike Allen replaced all plastic pintas with bottled milk — now available at 60p a pint and very popular, judging by the tray of empties outside his shop.
Next,cafe owner Gethin James, 51, pledged to cut down on plastics at his takeaway, replacing plastic cutlery with wooden — despite it costing more than twice as much — and encouraging customers to bring their own cups, or use his china ones.
‘It won’t kill us to start washing up again, will it?’ he says.
the village hall has also banned plastic cutlery. the chapel discourages the use of single-use plastic on the premises. the Post Office and pharmacy are moving towards paper bags only, and the village council is hoping to install drinking fountains, so no one needs to buy bottled water again. ‘As children, we didn’t carry bottles everywhere,’ says Gail tudor, the leader of Plastic-free Aberporth.
‘there were drinking fountains. Bottled water is a marketing ploy that’s destroying our planet.’
Aberporth’s big anti-plastic push started barely eight weeks ago after Gail, a mother of two, wedding photographer and keen swimmer, toured the British coastline, studying the effect of discarded plastics on marine life.
‘We’re a coastal community. every day, we open our curtains and you look onto the Irish Sea, but even we had no idea how dangerous plastic was in the ocean,’ she says.
‘Not just physically, but when it breaks into fragments, it attracts toxins from the ocean that get into the fish and our food chain.’
As we are all finally beginning to realise — and as the Daily Mail has been highlighting in its brilliant campaign — plastic and microbeads get everywhere.
every year, we’re dumping at least eight million tons of plastic in our ocean and, if we continue to allow this to happen, by 2050 there is going to be more plastic in the ocean than fish.
Recently, Newcastle University researchers revealed that even crustaceans almost seven miles down at the bottom of the Mariana trench in the Pacific had swallowed microplastic fragments.
‘If a plastic bottle goes into the ocean, it’s not out of sight out of mind, because it will come back to us and affect our health and the health of our future generations,’ says Gail.
Horrified by the pollution and beaches clogged with plastic, she vowed to do something.
At first, she struggled to get the locals behind her.
After all, Aberporth’s beaches were already some of the cleanest in the country. they’ve got Blue Flag and clean beach awards coming out of their ears. Some felt they were already doing their bit for the environment — and who could blame them?
even the primary school has a dedicated ‘rubbish squad’. No one here would dream of venturing out without a collecting bag and, this year, the annual Boxing Day swim, attended by around 200 people, started with a bracing litter pick.
But then Sir David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II documentary popped up with its heartbreaking scenes of whales choking on plastic and turtles strangled by plastic waste. And everything changed.
‘It was a light bulb moment,’ says local Sue Lewis. ‘It put it very high in people’s consciousness.’
After an animated discussion at Gail’s book club, the villagers vowed to go the extra mile and set up the Plastic- free Aberporth steering committee.
‘Some people might say we’re just a tiny village, so what’s the point,’ says Gail.
‘But there are lots of tiny villages in Britain and, if they all did what we’re doing, it would make a difference. We’re trying to lead by example.’ the real problem, of course, is manufacturers.
‘We can help raise awareness,’ says Muriel behind the counter in the hardware shop. ‘But it can be hard in business because of all the packaging. Hopefully, if we make enough noise, one day they’ll listen.’
Villagers have already persuaded Qinetiq, the MoD weapons testing agency, stationed high up on the cliffs, to join forces.
‘It’s all very hush hush behind the barbed wire,’ says Sue Lewis. ‘But they’ve joined the steering committee and are reducing the use of plastics up on the base.’
It turns out there are a few things the hardy people of Aberporth could teach the rest of us.
LIFEhere isn’t always easy — far from it. ‘Jobs are scarce. Most of the work is seasonal and winter is more about survival,’ says Councillor Gethin Davies, 60, who has lived here all his life.
But, for all that, people are cheery. they smile in the street, and the village throbs with activity. there are book clubs, history groups, yoga clubs and baby clubs; knitting groups, WI groups (in english and Welsh) and a weekly country market.
the church — which boasts an energetic new guitar-playing vicar — is awash with events.
As well as looking after the planet, people look after each other. they help the old and frail — the pensioners’ Christmas lunch attracted more than 80 people.
they leave their back doors open and their cars unlocked. the crime rate is the second lowest in the UK: the worst thing anyone can remember happening here was the theft of the car park honesty box — and that was found in a hedge.
the primary school (a platinum award-winning ‘eco school’ with a student ‘eco council’) has 120 pupils. But the Ship Inn, with its views of the angry Irish Sea, is the real hub. everyone pops in — for a pint, a chinwag, a game of darts, or just to get out of the wind.
this is the HQ of the Plastic-free Aberforth steering committee and the epicentre of all plastic-related chat. Of which there is plenty.
‘You don’t need to live by the sea to be polluting it,’ says Gail. ‘A bottle thrown in a river in Birmingham will end up in the sea.’
‘People throw these things away, they flush ’ em down the toilet,’ says Jim, my taxi driver.
Nearly 1,000 pieces of litter are now discarded for every 100 metres of coastline each year — up 10 per cent on last year, with single-use containers most at fault.
But not here. I can’t imagine a sweet wrapper being thrown away here, far less a plastic bottle.
However hard I look — as I walk past the chemist, Post Office, the
hardware shop, the grey and red liveried village hall and crates of milk bottles — I cannot find a single bit of litter. The beach is immaculate. The sea is pristine. Even the bins are clean.
Yvonne Craig in the Post Office-cum-pharmacy isn’t surprised. ‘We’ve always kept it nice because it’s our village and we love it,’ she says. ‘It’s that sort of place. We just don’t drop rubbish here. And now, we’re trying to show others how to do the same.’
Not everyone in the village has embraced the changes yet. But there doesn’t appear to be any tension brewing.
The Golden Dragon Chinese Takeaway, which uses polystyrene containers and plastic cutlery, is in the committee’s sights. ‘We’re working on that,’ says Sue. ‘It’ll be tricky, because they need an alternative. You can’t be a plastic Nazi — people have to make a living.’
Next on the agenda is to provide more drinking fountains, as well as ‘Plastic Clever’ stickers to go in the windows of participating businesses. And, by early 2018, hopefully, recognition with the status of Wales’s first plastic-free village.
Of course, one village alone — however dedicated — can’t change anything.
‘We know in the big scheme of Pacific Ocean pollution, what we’re doing is minuscule, but if everyone did it, it would have an effect,’ says Sue.
‘It costs more. But if you get grass-roots momentum, it does work. And you never know, it might just show manufacturers and people who wrap even single bananas in plastic that it’s not what we want.’
Let’s hope so. If anywhere can lead the charge, it’s Aberporth. Because this is a special place — a village that has somehow weathered the demise of seafaring and fishing and the march of technology.
And which, instead of withering and moaning, has reinvented itself, as a holiday destination, an enviable place to live — and a world leader in the fight against plastic.