LOCAL SALES BAN FOR POLYSTYRENE BODYBOARDS
ACOASTAL village has become the first in the UK to ban the sale of polystyrene bodyboards.
Shops in Westward Ho! have agreed to stop selling them after a petition on the issue was signed by 3,000 people.
The steps were welcomed by campaign group Keep Britain Tidy which said more than 16,000 of the polystyrene bodyboards were discarded on UK beaches every year.
The sale ban has followed regular calls for holidaymakers enjoying a staycation to avoid using the “cheap and nasty” plastic bodyboards, saying the Chinese-made items were often breaking up across the coastline and being discarded.
It is hoped other areas across the country will now follow the Devon village’s stance to help reduce the impact on the environment.
The petition was led by local environmentalist Andrew Cross, and backed by Keep Britain Tidy’s Neil Hembrow.
Neil, 44, from Exeter, Devon, said: “3,000 signatures isn’t where we want to be at, we want a lot more. 10,000 gets it talked about in Parliament and that’s our first goal.
“For us, the ultimate aim is to reduce waste, these boards are shipped in from 11,000 miles away just for a few days use and they end us as waste of over here.
“They’re high volume and low weight, imagine containers packed with these things shipped into the country then distributed around the UK so there’s a huge carbon footprint. They’re almost single use plastic, they snap so easily. I don’t think people realise how poorly they are created, they’re not good value for money.
“This is a step in the right direction, it’s a very progressive step, there’s a few locations who have agreed to ban the sale of the boards, Westward Ho! and Saunton, and we want to take it further and ban in other areas.”
Peter Sawyer who owns the Kite and Surf shop in Westward Ho! said: “If someone came up to me and said can I give you £3 and just sprinkle this all over the floor, you’re not going to do it.
“This is exact the same thing, you’re selling that product just knowing it’s going to end up putting polystyrene into the ocean.”
He and other businesses in Westward Ho! have agreed not to sell the boards and believe they will not be the only ones. He added: “This is the front of the wave, I think you’ll see that most places around the UK will stop selling these.”
Andrew Cross from Plastic Free North Devon called for more places across the UK to now join the fight.
He added: “We need to get every single multi-chain retailer on board with this ban and to do this we need Government legislation behind us. We hear rhetoric from our national political leaders about how we’re going to lead the world, well this is one simple action that can be taken where we can lead the world.”