Sedgefield Town Council is delighted to sign up to the County Durham Single Use Plastics pledge. It’s important that we all try to do what we can to help the environment.

Single use plastics are used only once before they are thrown away or recycled. These items are things like plastic bags, straws, coffee stirrers, water bottles and most food packaging. It is thought that more than five trillion pieces of plastic are in the world’s oceans and it can take years for it to break down. Most of it isn’t biodegradable, it doesn’t rot like paper or food and so it can hang around in the environment for hundreds of years.

As individuals there are all sorts of things you can choose to do to reduce single use plastics. These can include things such as:

• Carry a shopping bag instead of buying a plastic bag
• Carry a reusable bottle or coffee cup
• Say no to plastic straws and disposable cutlery
• Avoid excessive food packaging
• Pack your lunch in reusable containers
• Get your milk delivered – you can find your nearest delivery on Find Me A Milkman
• Avoid using microbeads which are mainly found in exfoliating face and body scrubs, shower gels, toothpastes

The Town Council is going to try to reduce its usage of single use plastics by:

• Signing the County Durham Single Use Plastics Pledge and do as much as it can to reduce usage
• Make our local community aware that we have signed the pledge and encourage others to do so. Pledge certificates will be displayed in the Parish Hall and Town Council Offices. We will also put an article with photograph of Cllrs and the Pledge into the next edition of the Sedgefield Extra, on our website and via Twitter.
• Try to seek alternatives to single use plastics wherever possible
• Encourage Parish Hall users to look at ways in which they could reduce their us of single use plastics. We will make a reference to this in the Parish Hall user policy.

http://www.durham.gov.uk/singleuseplastics