Helen Tandy, Founding Director, Eco Communities
In our aim or Plastic Free Cheshire our next regions joining the fight against single use plastic is Hoole and Helsby which we are launching this festive season.
We are launching Plastic Free Hoole at the Hoole Lights switch on this Saturday, 18th November and Plastic Free Helsby at its Ho Ho Helsby event on the 2nd of December. Plastic Free Communities is a national initiative administered by the environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage.
You will find the team at both events aiming to reduce single use plastic, with our hot and cold returnable drinks cups. Our returnable hot cup is already being used by many of the independent cafes in Chester and this year the Hoole Lights Committee will be offering these exclusively for its mulled wine. We will also be encouraging visitors to give up on single use plastic pint cups and go for our returnable pint.
Cllr Adam Langhan told us “As chair of the Hoole Light Committee we are supporting Eco Communities in launching Plastic Free Hoole at this year’s Christmas lights switch on, we hope residents will also support the team by using its reusable cups and glasses via a deposit return scheme, so we can reduce the amount of single use plastic waste from this event in 2023”
Hoole Lights switch on can go through over 400 single use hot drinks cups during the event and thousands of single use pint cups. This year it won’t be single use plastic free, but we aim to reduce the numbers substantially.
We hope visitors to the Hoole Lights Event on Saturday 18th November will support this fantastic project for Hoole.
I have now been campaigning against single use plastics for the last 7 years and lived in Hoole for around 18 months now. I attended last year’s Hoole Light event and saw how much single use plastic was used and also left on the streets after last year’s event.
We are excited to see how we could support the fantastic work the Hoole Lights Committee do each year by reducing the single use plastic waste and littering from the event.
Our returnable cups will be available for a £2 deposit.
Visitors can either get a refund at the end of the event by bringing the cup back to us or return the cup and choose to donate to the funds to Eco Communities a not-for-profit organisation completely run by volunteers
We are also excited to launch Plastic Free Hoole on Saturday and so this is a long-term project with the Hoole Community.
We will also be a Ho Ho Helsby on the 2nd of December with the same aims.
Cllr Chris Copeman “As a new Councillor in Helsby I have asked the team at Eco Communities to help the community reduce its use of single use plastic via Plastic Free Helsby, an award by Surfers Against Sewage that asks community groups, schools, businesses etc to try to limit the amount of single use plastic. They will be joining us as this year’s Christmas event to get this project started and I hope you will support them by asking any organisations, community groups, businesses you are involved with or run to sign up”
Sustainable Cheshire 