No plastic bags Bristol and a purple bee

Posted by Andy Hamilton - 21/09/08 at 10:09:10 am

Popped over to the bohemian part of Bristol Yesterday to see the launch of the GRAB campaign. The Gloucester Road Alternative Bag Campaign basically is exactly what it says on the tin, er well bag. 60 shops along one road have signed up to not give out un-biodegradable bags. So it was sort of a launch of not giving out a product and who said post modernism was dead!

Those of you who are long time ishers will remember the “carry a bag” campaign. We were one of the first webistes to really bring the issue of bags to the forefront. As we were the first I can safely say without being deluded in the slightest, that if it was not for selfsufficientish carry a bag campaign none of the biodegradable bags that some of the shops give out would ever have happened. Well we were top search for Tesco bag at one point and it linked to a letter from me to Tesco telling them that as they stated in an early letter they were not, “leading the way in green issues”.

Back to Gloucester Road thing, it was a great day out with singers, freebies, bags and the sun shone for the first Saturday in ages. The singers were so good I took a little video clip of them – GRAB

I have heard the argument that whilst we concentrate on carrier bags the rest of the 99% of packaging is being forgotten about. Again Bristol seemed have got it right and some of the shops were even stopping their packaging. The Butchers had reverted back to grease proof paper, home brew shop was only offering bio-degradable packaging on many of their products and the Scoopaway shop have reduced the size of the bags you get your nuts, flour, muesli or whatever into.  Not just that anything that makes people question what they consider as normal as using a carrier bag is great in my book (page 456).

I am seriously considering a new campaign to get companies responsible for their waste. Not sure the logistics of that yet and even if it would work, will have to ponder for a little longer.

Purple Bee

I forgot to mention in my elderberry wine post the other day; when I was preparing the elderberries I saw some of them move. I looked down into the mass of berries and saw a bee, well I can only assume it was a bee as it was dyed a very dark purple from all the elderberries. I scooped it out and threw it out of the window and it was gone by the time we left the house, so hopefully he flew back to his hive and had a story to tell all of his other bee mates.

1 Comment

RSS feed for comments on this post.

1. Well look what I found! Sorry I’ve not been around chaps – crazyness of all flavours with my own book but it seems to be calming down for a while now. Must catch up with some people, and you’re top of the list!

   What a terrific idea – the blog and the campaign – and a whole vanload of work as I’m sure you know. Sic ‘em, fellas!

   Comment by hedgewizard — September 22, 2008 #

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

..