Bags Not campaign aims to ban the plastic
A new initiative aimed at reducing and ultimately eliminating single-use plastic bags and other plastic waste from our environment has been launched.
The Bags Not campaign, which encourages New Zealanders to say ‘Bags Not’ to plastic bags and to change their single-use habits has already received support from New World and ecostore.
“New World is committed to getting rid of single-use plastic bags by 2018, and to do this we’re providing the market with longlife reusable bags, expanding soft plastics recycling, and looking for alternatives for our customers,” GM group marketing Foodstuffs NZ Steve Bayliss said.
“But that’s the easy part — we need to help change the habit of a lifetime.”
It was important to work with people to motivate behaviour change, he said, one key to that being to encourage them to revisit their use of plastic bags. Bags Not was challenging retailers to take up the call and look at the alternatives they could offer their customers.
Riley (the Shark Man) Elliott, actor Pua Magasiva, artist Dick Frizzell and writer and TV presenter Jaquie Brown have all got behind the initiative.
“I make a concerted effort to remember to take my reusable bags to the supermarket, but like many shoppers it’s easy to forget,” Ms Brown said.
“It’s not going to happen overnight, but if we all take responsibility for our own actions starting now, we can collectively make a significant difference”.
Nick Morrison, from Go Well Consulting and communications agency, which is the brains behind Bags Not, said New Zealanders were currently using around 1.6 billion single-use plastic bags a year. It would take hundreds to thousands of years for each of those bags to degrade, creating microplastics as they broke down.
“In the meantime this has a devastating effect on ecosystems, particularly marine environments. There are relatively simple solutions available, if every New Zealander is prepared to take ownership of the problem,” he said.
“We know plastic bags wreak havoc on the environment, but getting people to change the way they shop overnight is a lot to ask. We believe that education and easy access to alternatives are the keys to creating a cultural shift,” Bcg2 chairman James Blackwood said.
“Working collaboratively with businesses at the coalface of this issue is the most lasting way to bring that change to bear. Retailers like New World are proactively addressing the issue, and we want the public to get behind their initiatives. We think that together we can make a dif-