Plastic Free Hay Meeting - the year ahead.

We gathered in the downstairs dining room of Kilverts - and had to pull the table away from the open fire before some of us roasted!
One of the members of the group has been trying to find out where the recycling collected by Powys County Council goes to, without much success.
Another has joined Extinction Rebellion, a movement which has similar but broader aims than just concentrating on plastic waste, and will keep the group posted about what they get up to. The Hereford group is very active, and a new group is starting up in Brecon.

So far the group have been visiting local retailers to talk to them about reducing the use of plastic. They've also been talking to Andy Fryer of Hay Festival. However, shops like Spar can't do much because they get their products from a central supplier. It's the suppliers that need to be contacted and persuaded to change. However, one success story is the sale of milk in glass bottles at Londis, who have more control over what they stock. The group has stickers to give out to show that shops are reducing their use of plastic.
They also mentioned the new paper bags and wrappings at the butchers on Broad Street, and the feeling was that Geraldine Gibbons will be doing something similar when she moves her shop across the road into the new premises.
It was noted that the chemists sells bottled water from a fridge, which is not good as far as plastic waste is concerned - but they are also stocking things like bamboo toothbrushes, which is a positive sign.
Meanwhile Addymans are phasing out plastic bags in their three bookshops.

There was a discussion of compostable bags, with a query about how compostable they really are - one lady has been fishing bits of supposedly compostable bag out of her compost heap since all they seem to have done is break up into smaller pieces, which is a problem. Other bags are advertised as "degradable", but what does this really mean? The corn starch bags were felt to be a good idea, but the idea of any substitute for plastic bags to be given out in shops was felt to be a retrograde step, when there had been so much effort put into persuading the shopping public to bring their own bags.
Research was obviously needed into the bags, but the group were warned not to go to the manufacturers for advice, but to companies involved in waste, such as Cymru Waste (possibly WRAP Cymru? which is what came up when I Googled).

Members were also concerned that the free school milk that is given out at Hay School comes in little plastic bottles which are then thrown away. Again, this is a problem that the school cannot necessarily solve as it comes from the County Council, who arrange the contract for a group of schools, and the suppliers.

Actions for the future for the group include going round all the cafes in Hay to see if they can reduce their plastic use - and later, maybe a pub crawl!
In the coming year the group also want to organise at least one event with a speaker - the Globe have offered to assist here, and it might be possible to put together a workshop on cutting down plastics. Another possibility is approaching Andy Fryer to ask him to talk about the recycling policy of Hay Festival.
One member said that the Welsh government website has an area showing what every County Council has done with their recycling for the previous five years. Actually, it seems to go back further than that, and can be found by Googling "Welsh government local authority municipal waste statistics".

Also being passed around the table was a copy of the 'i' for Friday, with headlines about waste being burned in incinerators because there are not enough facilities in the UK to recycle different materials. Also, the waste that used to be sent to China is no longer going there, as China will not accept it any more.

The group also want to go to visit the waste facility in Worcester where waste from the Herefordshire side of the border goes. As Hay is on the border, the members have to be aware of the different strategies of two different County Councils. One member said that, when a visit was organised, they should go in a minibus rather than their own cars, because of carbon emissions, and someone suggested hiring the Dial-a-Ride bus for the outing.

Other groups that Plastic Free Hay felt they should keep in touch with include Plastic Free Powys, and there is a Greenpeace campaign about plastic. On Saturday 2nd February, from 10am to about 4pm, Greenpeace (and a lady from Plastic Free Hay) will be outside Tesco in Hereford with a shopping trolley for shoppers to put any un-necessary plastic wrapping into, and at the end of the day this can be photographed, and later returned to Tesco with an appeal for them to reduce the amount of plastic they are selling. Tesco was chosen for this because it opens onto a public footpath. If the protest was happening in a supermarket car park, they could be made to move on, as that would be private property.
They were also encouraged to get in touch with the Woodland Group, who have all the equipment for litter picking, for another future activity.

There was a brief discussion about washing up sponges, which cannot be recycled, and I mentioned Greenbrands cleaning products, which is one company that sells scourers made out of luffas (loofahs?) and pan scrapers made out of pieces of coconut husk - which can just be put in the compost when they come to the end of their life (www.greenbrands.co.uk).
Another thought for the future was to have an A-frame blackboard in the market, with a different plastic reducing idea every week chalked up.
Finally it was noted that the green waste bins will be disappearing from Hay Car Park soon, to be replaced by a scheme where householders have to buy bags to put their garden waste in, to be collected at the kerbside.