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Early this week I was asked if I had any objection to the Banchory bags Campaign being used as the basis of a dissertation by a Masters student from The Robert Gordon University. Of course, I was delighted and met with the student’s tutor to give her some background on the campaign [pointing her to this blog, of course] and suggested some questions I would like included in the survey.
The student has been in Banchory this week interviewing shoppers with a questionnaire about the campaign and whether it has changed their shopping habits. The initial responses look to be positive, and shoppers were happy to be stopped and questioned.
This survey will be treated as a ‘Pilot Study’ and a more extensive study will, hopefully, be undertaken by another student next year.
It will be very interesting for campaign members to know the results of the survey once the information has been collated.
The Aberdeenshire Environmental Forum has awarded the Banchory bags Campaign the ‘Green Butterfly Award’, which was presented at an awards ceremony on November 20 by BBC radio presenter, Mark Stephen.
The award was presented to Karen Clark, Paul Herrington and myself on behalf of the campaign, but I feel very strongly that it is a recognitition of the commitment and effort that the whole of the Banchory community have put into changing their habits. The shoppers and traders have really embraced the idea of using reusable shopping bags and the award is an affirmation of that support.
We had a very successful ‘Follow-Up’ to our Campaign in early November.
A very rough survey of the shops which had given away the most plastic bags showed a remarkable decline in the numbers of bags being given away. Somerfield, for instance, told us that they had reduced the number of bags they ordered by 80%. It was very heartening.
We still decided to target Somerfield for our ‘Follow-up’, together with McColls, WH Smith and the Co-op on the High Street, and the Waste Aware team also came to Somerfield with their big bus to talk to residents about waste and to reinforce our message.
We had over 600 ‘Cleaner, Greener, Banchory’ bags to give away and a team of 8 volunteers managed to do this in just a couple of hours. Many shoppers were already carrying their own reusable bags, but those who didn’t have any welcomed the Banchory bags with open arms. The volunteers really noticed a difference in the attitude of shoppers.
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