Plastic Free Ledbury

 

This project has two elements which aims to support both the traders and the residents of Ledbury and the surrounding villages.

We want to raise awareness of how we can all reduce the use of plastics in our daily lives and also how plastics effects both traders and residents.

We started by asking Traders if they would consider moving away from their current packaging to a more sustainable packing. Some of them already had started to make the switch, but quite often as an independent trader, buying small volumes of sustainable packaging was cost prohibitive. There was support for the creation of a “hub” where traders could draw down the packaging, they required that had been purchased in bulk, so reducing their costs. 

Our conversations identified that many traders were already using sustainable packaging, but a greater problem was disposing of their trade waste in a sustainable way. Prior to the pandemic lockdowns, Sustainable Ledbury had met with Ledbury Traders Association about seeking to use alternative recycle waste removal options. This work was suspended during lockdown and now needs to be restarted, particularly, in light of the new Waste Strategy from Herefordshire Council.

The above research highlighted that residents didn’t know what things were and weren’t recyclable and that labelling was confusion. The project team came up with the idea of holding a “Gardener’s Question Time” style event bringing together the public, traders large and small, those in the plastic business and the councils. Again, lockdown meant that this could not happen, and the team are now considering an event in the open, in the spring of 2022.

Anybody wishing to get involved in the project should email sustainableledbury@gmail.com