Juliet Oxborrow and Sue Fleming, co-ordinators of Plastic Free Lewes, look back at its first year of plastic action and what’s happening in 2019.

When we first thought about setting up Plastic Free Lewes last autumn it was partly in response to people increasingly asking us if Transition Town Lewes (TTL) was doing anything about plastic pollution.

Given that TTL had spent a decade trying to encourage less dependence on fossil fuels, it only seemed logical that we addressed the other side of the petro-chemical coin: the rapid and downright terrifying increase both in disposable plastic production and a growing mountain of waste with which even the UK, with its sophisticated waste management infrastructure, was struggling to cope.

We launched Plastic Free Lewes with a screening of the powerful documentary ‘A Plastic Ocean’ at Depot Cinema in December 2017. Scheduled just a couple of weeks before Christmas, we were sceptical that anyone would want to turn out during the height of the festive season to watch a film documenting the pitiful plight of sealife unknowingly ingesting the world’s plastic detritus (and the disturbing knock-on effect that was potentially having on human food chains). Read more…