Emma Young from Plastic Free Thornbury writes in her first column for the Gazette.

Plastic Free communities are a nationwide group of communities supported by the charity Surfers against Sewage.

Plastic Free Thornbury became an accredited Plastic Free Community in July 2024.

What does this mean? It doesn't mean Thornbury is totally plastic free! No, but it does mean we as a community are working hard to try and remove or replace as much single use plastic as possible.

None of this would be possible if the retail shops, businesses, residents and Thornbury Town Council were not behind us and part of Plastic Free Thornbury.

Currently we have 19 plastic free business champions all of whom are local, independent and who have each removed or replaced at least 3 single use plastic items from their business.

Out of these 19 businesses some have achieved silver level for continuing to remove single use plastics.

These silver level businesses include Safari Rick Cafe, Bristol Coffee Company, Hawkes House and Riddiford's .

Plastic Free Thornbury also has 20 community allies who support Plastic Free Thornbury's aims to reduce single use plastic.

These include Thornbury in Bloom, Sustainable Thornbury, Thornbury Radio and Thornbury litter busters.

Over the past few months many plastic free business champions have investigated and fed back to their suppliers their wish to replace as much single use packaging with recycled packaging.

One example of a silver level business is Safari Rock cafe - the soft play cafe in St Marys Centre.

They have removed or replaced plastic cutlery, plastic straws, plastic carrier bags, plastic takeaway packaging and other plastic packaging used in the business.

And they offer free drinking water and are slowly changing the amount of soft drinks they sell in plastic for glass or aluminium.

Riddiford's have just received their silver award for their continuing efforts to remove single use plastic.

They offer paper bags for all their loose produce, have drastically reduced the amount of plastic bags they sell, removed plastic cups and are always looking for ways to replace their single use plastic packaging.

At the same time as supporting Plastic Free Thornbury, I also search for headlines of stories from around the world that people may have missed and talk about them on my weekly slot on Thornbury Radio.

Here are some examples: In the Netherlands different areas of the country compete against one another in a competition called Tegelwippen.

It involves taking up paving slabs and concrete to replace it with greenery. So far land equivalent to 200 football fields have been reclaimed for nature.

In Pakistan farmers are growing pumpkins and other crops in sand banks to help with food poverty.

Barcelona is using the braking systems of trains to generate power for train stations and EV chargers.

Finland is building the world's biggest heat pump. It will power 30,000 homes and can operate in temperatures as low as minus 20.

A herd of wild bulls have been reintroduced to the Scottish highlands to help with storing carbon.

My project to find recycling in Thornbury for blister packs continues.

What are blister packs? They are the plastic and foil packets used to store tablets, supplements and medication.

Because they are made of two different materials they cannot go into the plastic recycling as it contaminates it and then goes into landfill.

South Gloucestershire are unable to provide recycling boxes for blister packs due to budgets.

So what can we do with the thousands of these plastic/foil packets that have to go into household waste and therefore landfill?

There are companies that will send you a zero waste bag www.zerowastebag.co.uk but this costs money.

A small zero waste bag costs £25 and can hold approximately 150 blister packs. And you cannot mix what goes into the zero waste bags with other types of plastic unless you order a different type of box. Yes it is a minefield and costs money.

I welcome any thoughts and comments on this, especially help from our new MP Claire Young on whether she can help draft or propose a bill that will encourage manufacturers to do something about this type of plastic waste.