Love Bicester, love your bag!
This week sees the launch of the new 'Love Bicester' shopping bag
Earlier in the year Bicester Vision (1) was successful in gaining £6,000 from Oxfordshire Waste Partnership (OWP) towards a project to free Bicester of plastic bags (2).
Staff from Bicester Vision, OWP and Cherwell District Council will be at the Thursday Farmers’ Market and the Bicester Town Market on Friday in Sheep Street to give out the ‘Love Bicester’ bag to anyone who makes a purchase.
Rachel Faulkner is Bicester Vision’s partnership manager and is running the plastic bag free Bicester project. She says: “We wanted to make a funky fashionable bag that people would be proud to carry around and also declare their love for their town. With Valentines’ Day falling at the weekend it’s a perfect time for people to declare their love for Bicester and the environment!”
OWP chair, Cllr John Tanner adds: “Plastic bags can be useful but they get everywhere, blowing along the street, getting stuck in hedges and littering town and country. I'm thrilled that Bicester is leading the way and that so many groups and individuals across Oxfordshire are curbing plastic bag use. Making plastic bags uses up non-renewable resources and they are difficult to recycle. It's better for the environment to reuse plastic bags and better still, carry stuff in canvas bags or even a straw basket."
Bicester Vision is keen to support the monthly Farmers’ Market which has struggled to attract the usual interest at other Oxfordshire sites. It offers something extra to the town and complements high street shops, but with fewer customers attending the market, its future is in doubt.
Peter Williams organises the market on behalf of Thames Valley Farmers Market Cooperative. “It’s great to have this support so that our traders will be able to offer punters a reusable bag,” says Peter. “But importantly, we need the customers to come and support us to ensure the market continues to operate in Bicester.”
- Bicester Vision is an independent partnership of businesses and local authorities committed to making the most of Bicester. See www.bicestervision.co.uk for more info.
- £25,000 worth of grant funding was made available via Oxfordshire County Council for plastic bag free towns. Grants were to support towns and communities wanting to set up schemes to persuade residents not to use plastic carrier bags. Some schemes set out to promote local reusable cloth bags while others found innovative ways to remind shoppers to use the bags they already have at home. Cloth bags produced by towns are also used to promote local retail businesses and raise awareness of the town. More information on the project.
