My name is Christina Brown and I’m the convener of the Banchory bags Campaign.
I was born and grew up in Australia, but since marrying an English engineer I have lived in many different countries all around the world. However, I had Scottish grandparents and fell in love with the countryside when I arrived in Aberdeen in 1991. In 1995 my husband and I decided to make our permanent home in Banchory.
When I looked out of my kitchen window for years and years I could see a plastic bag flying like a flag at the top of one of my neighbour’s trees. It has now gone, but I know it has not truly gone because it will take hundreds of years for it to decompose into even tiny pieces of plastic.
The Modbury plastic bag free campaign was really inspirational and I thought:
‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone did that for Banchory’.
I even offered to help several people who were talking about it; but, when nothing happened, I decided to give it a go myself…… and here I am!
4 comments
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February 13, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Rebecca Hosking
Hi Christina,
well done for starting your Banchory plastic bag free campaign.:)
I’m just writing to see if you would be interested in joining our PBF forum, we’re trying to get all the leaders of the campaigns up and down the country together so we can help eachother.
If you are interested please look at http://groups.google.com/group/plasticbagfree?hl=en
very best wishes
Rebecca
February 14, 2008 at 8:31 am
Christina Brown
What a brilliant idea. I’d love to join.
Christina
June 17, 2009 at 9:52 pm
golconde
Dear Christina,
thank you for this informative blog, which is far more than a blog.
Writing you with one request.
I’m now doing research for my master thesis about environmental policies, and look for cases different from standard economic approaches. For example for removing plastic bags out of massive use a simple ban can be used, or the price for them increased. But there are smarter ways.
Your blog is a good example! However , I look for more data… If you have some statements or any other documents where it is explained why and how you approach the problem of plastic bag use, it would be just great if you could share. You also mention a student doing relevant research, may be s/he could share the data too.
I would be very grateful if you answer and at least point where I should search for the needed information.
Thank you in advance!
golconde
June 29, 2009 at 11:23 am
Christina Brown
Dear Golconde
Thank you very much for your kind words about my blog. I am not sure that economic approaches are not the easiest and fastest ways of removing plastic bags out of circulation. Radio 4 this morning was talking about the Welsh assembly wanting to start charging 15p per bag as they do in Ireland. Apparently, this has cut demand by 90% in Ireland, which is quite impressive.
Here in Banchory, as you will have gathered from the blog, we have concentrated more on changing shoppers’ habits and have tried by gentle persuasion to get them to use their own reusable bags…. and we have had a lot of success. If you walk down our High St you see lots of people carrying reusable bags, but not everyone and not 90% I guess. [We are going to do a follow-up survey of shops in a few months to try to ascertain numbers.]
There are lots of sites on the internet. Modbury has an excellent one but, if you just type in plastic bags campaigns [or something like that], you will get lots of choices.
Good luck.
Christina