This leaflet will be inserted into the Banchory & District Initiative Community Newsletter which will be delivered to every household in Banchory and the surrounding district in the next few weeks.

I would like to thank the Raemoir Garden Centre for their efforts to help the campaign.  They are doing a good job.  I think we should all re-use the small cardboard trays that they now put plants on.  It would be easy to take them with you next time you go to buy a plant…….. just like taking your reusable bags!

As well as the Garden Centre, I also visited both the golf clubs in Banchory.  I hadn’t thought of approaching them before, but they are both now thinking about ways in which they can cut down/eliminate completely single-use plastic bags. 

I delivered the last of the invitations today to The Ashvale Takeaway and was informed that they were getting their own Go Green bags with THE ASHVALE on one side and DELICIOUS & NUTRITIOUS on the other.

You could have knocked me down with a feather!  Well done, The Ashvale! 

This gave me the courage to talk with the Manager of the Indian Restaurant, The Derbar, which I had been reluctant to do and, again, I came away walking on air.  Although they will not go as far as getting their own reusable bags, the Manager said he would be more than happy to put-up posters all around the restaurant.

That is great, as we have had an amazing response from the primary school children of the area and are being inundated with posters……… all incredibly good and all showing how much of the message the children have absorbed.

I spent Friday going around Banchory handing-out invitations to all the shopkeepers to join us for a glass of wine at our local art centre [Lang Byre at Woodend Barn] on Friday, May 30 to celebrate the opening of an exhibition of posters which the primary school children of the area have designed to support the Banchory bags Campaign. 

A local MSP, Maureen Watt, the Minister for Skills and Schools will formally open the exhibition and BbC intends to use the occasion to thank all our sponsors and the traders in the town for their support. 

Invitations have also been sent to our local MSP’s, MP and Councillors, all our sponsors, Heads of the various schools in the area and teachers, as well as the prize winners, their parents and siblings. 

An Aberdeen Art teacher will be judging the posters and, from those that I have already seen, I think he is going to have a very difficult task indeed.

Members of the BbC team are doing ‘follow-up’ visits to the shops around the town and The Shieling is the latest store to report that they have ceased ordering plastic bags.  Well done.

I heard this morning that the Cleaner, Greener, Banchory bags are on the ocean but not due to land in the UK until May 31 and we are not sure, at this stage, where they will do so.  It will probably take 4-6 days for them to be cleared by the authorities and then they have to get to Go Green, be sorted, and delivered from St. Andrew’s to  Banchory.

It makes our thoughts about commencing to hand them out on our joint promotion day with Waste Aware on June 7 rather unlikely.  However, we can still make good use of that day by stopping and talking with people around town and handing-out our bookmarks and, hopefully, the bags will be in Banchory in time to be given away at St. Ternan’s Fair, which looks as if it will be a very exciting event this year.

Cllr. Karen Clark [a member of BbC] and I had a meeting with Sean, the new manager of Somerfield in Banchory this afternoon. 

He told us that the Banchory store had already cut it’s usage of plastic bags by 20%, but he said that he was aiming to cut it further - hopefully to 60% - and we said we would do anything we could to help him achieve this.

He had recently been at a conference with other managers and said that he had heard of three Somerfield stores which had, or were trying, to become pbf.  He had talked with his Regional Manager, who was in favour of the endeavour, and Sean plans to talk with the Regional Manager for Durham [which is one of the stores attempting to go pbf] this week, and will report back to Karen and myself early next week.

Both Karen and I felt that the meeting had been very useful.

I spoke with the Iain Fergusson from the Co-op today and he tells me that after Banchory Co-op has its re-fit [in June I believe] from then on plastic bags will be kept under the counter - customers with just a couple of items will be expected to carry them in their arms;  customers with more shopping will be asked if they have their own bags;  if not, they will be offered a cotton bag for 99p;  if they refuse that, they can buy a ‘home compostable’ bag for 6p;  if all that fails, they can demand a plastic bag……. but they are hoping that shoppers will have given-in by then.

This should be a great example to the other shops in Banchory.  Well done, Co-op.

Last night, I received a very interesting message from the Co-op:

I am the Commercial Packaging Manager at the Co-operative Group.  Part of my job is looking after carrier bags, and the home-compostable bag that we have on trial in around 40 stores is my baby.  If you send me an e-mail with your phone number, we can have a chat about what we are doing and what we can do to help you.

We haven’t managed to talk yet, but…….. watch this space……..

Yesterday afternoon, Cllr Clark [one of the BbC team] and I had a meeting with three members of the Waste Aware Department of Aberdeenshire Council. 

They have offered to help us promote our campaign on June 7 by bringing the ‘Waste Aware Bus’ over to Banchory and they will spend the day telling anyone who is interested why it is so important that they get into the habit of using their reusable bags whenever they go shopping [as well as informing them about other aspects of waste disposal].

They have a lot of posters and pamphlets on the bus and were telling us how popular it was with the schools when they visit.

I just hope that we will have our ‘Cleaner, Greener, Banchory’ bags by then and can start handing them out on that day.  I am going ahead with plans to do so - getting a roster of volunteers to come along together with information to hand-out to those who need persuading - but it would be nice to know if we will have the bags!