Group Wants Gibraltar Plastic-Bag Free, Launches Intensive Campaign

PRLog (Press Release) – Feb 21, 2008 – A newly established Gibraltar-based campaign group, dubbed as No to Plastic Bags (NO2PB), is aiming to make Gibraltar a plastic bag-free town and is even launching a campaign to make the town the first ever plastic bag-free city within the Iberian Peninsula.

NO2PB is comprised of members of the Gibraltar community who are concerned with various environmental issues including the town’s seemingly endless dependency on plastic bags. Inspired by Modbury, a town not that different in size compared to Gibraltar that became the first plastic bag-free town in Europe, NO2PB highlighted the government’s pivotal action in kick-starting environmental and ecologically-conscious projects as can be observed in several counties and regions within Ireland, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and most recently China.  

The main reasons behind the group’s inception include the following:

-   Plastic bags are generally non-recyclable and those that are tend to be either incinerated or buried within landfills;
-   Plastic bags are hardy and resilient and whilst this make them the ideal transport medium for our shopping it is also the reason for their recalcitrance;
-   Plastic bags take hundreds of years to degrade naturally in the environment, making them an eyesore as well as endangering our fauna that on occasions mistake plastic bags for food;
-   Plastic bags also tend to be incinerated with the rest of our waste and therefore contribute to the emission of toxic gases into the atmosphere

To beef up their campaign, NO2PB has launched an online drive via the popular social networking website Facebook. Dubbed as the “Say No to Plastic and Yes to Reusable Bags,” the ongoing campaign aims to reach out to at least 30,000 people connected to Gibraltar. NO2PB hopes to get at least 50 percent of the said number to sign the petition found at http://www.facebook.com/pages/No2PlasticBags/10374416156

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NO2PB’s campaign banners a pledge to “Bring Your Own Bag” wherein consumers are encouraged to bring reusable bags to the shop or supermarket.

NO2PB says that by doing this, consumers are doing their share in saving wildlife (as hundreds of thousands of marine creatures die every year from eating plastic bags mistaken for food), saving trees (thousands of trees are needed to make all of the paper bags used in Gibraltar annually), reducing waste (an estimated 4 billion plastic bags end up as litter globally each year) and reducing dependency on oil (thousands of barrels of oil are required to make millions of plastic shopping bags used yearly in Gibraltar alone) NO2PB’s campaign also asserts that if every Gibraltar consumer brought their own reusable bags when shopping, tens of tonnes of harmful carbon dioxide will be reduced.

NO2PB has announced that their group is in the process of organising a press conference where they hope to address any questions that the public may have.  

For more information, send email to no2pbgib@gmail.com


About No to Plastic Bags – Gibraltar:

No To Plastic Bags (NO2PB) is a campaign group set up in Gibraltar. Comprised of environmentally-conscious and concerned community members, the group aims to make Gibraltar a plastic bag-free town. The group also has an ongoing “Say No to Plastic and Yes to Reusable Bags” campaign via the popular social networking website Facebook. The objectives of the campaign include saving wildlife and trees and reducing waste. The campaign also aims to trim down dependence on oil as thousands of oil barrels are needed to make millions of plastic bags for use in Gibraltar alone. For more information, please contact NO2PB through email address no2pbgib@gmail.com