‘Plastic bag-free Whangarei’ celebrates Earth Day at Whangarei markets

Environmental group’ Plastic bag-free Whangarei’ is inviting the public to celebrate World Earth Day at the Growers Market, downtown on Market Street this Saturday by using reusable bags.

“It is a wonderful opportunity for the people of Whangarei and visitors to the market to use a bag that doesn’t cost the earth,” says group spokesperson Tammy Fromont.

The group has had a bag-swap stand at the market for the past month making reusable environment-friendly bags available to the public in a bid to reduce disposable plastic bag use in the city.

“We can see the value in doing a little bit to help and using reusable bags instead of disposable plastic bags is one way to do that,” says Tammy.

“We make reusable bags available for a small koha or in exchange to people who didn’t bring their own reusable bags or simply forgot instead of asking for plastic bags when they buy their produce.

“There are also people who have a lot of reusable bags at home that aren’t being used and we encourage them to bring bags to the stand as well for others to use.”

As a global initiative the plastic bag-free movement is a growing phenomenon in cities and countries all over the world and an example is Tasmania which has gone plastic bag-free since November 2013.

Although World Earth Day is officially on Friday (April 22), Tammy says the Growers market on Saturday is the ideal place to celebrate and for the public to do their little bit in support of the day.

“We will be be joined by Trade Aid and Eco Solutions at our stand this Saturday to mark Earth Day by displaying funky bags for sale, so we welcome the public to visit us, find out what we are doing to help the planet and what you can do; and if need be use one of our bags,” says Tammy.

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