A PLASTIC FREE BOROUGH

OUR GOAL:

THE PROJECT

Plastic Free Guildford is a voluntary community group campaigning to make Guildford a plastic-free borough.

The Plastic Free Communities campaign was set up by Surfers Against Sewage, to help protect our oceans & ecosystems from being choked by plastic pollution. We sign up businesses who commit to making changes to their daily operations to help counter the plastic pollution crisis.

Below you can read the five key goals which make up our plan to gain official Plastic Free Community status for our borough. If you would like to volunteer to help, or sign up your business to Plastic Free Guildford, please use the contact form on our home page.

8 MILLION

pieces of plastic enter the oceans every day

1 IN 3

fish caught for human consumption contain plastic

450 YEARS

for a plastic bottle to decompose

Our addiction to single-use plastics is bad for the environment, bad for wildlife and bad for our food-chain.

THE PROBLEM

1

We're campaigning to get Guildford Borough Council to commit to supporting the goal of securing official Plastic Free Community status for our borough, to encourage plastic-free community initiatives and to lead by example in eliminating single-use plastics from their activities.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

We want local businesses to join our campaign by becoming Plastic Free Champions. We have a goal of signing up at least 38 businesses and retailers (including flagship employers) across the borough to remove, or replace with sustainable alternatives, at least three single-use plastics from their premises.

2

PLASTIC FREE BUSINESSES

3

We want to spread the plastic-free message to a diverse audience and to make sure community groups and organisations are involved in the fight against avoidable single-use plastics. Our goal is to sign up half of all community spaces, at least one third of schools, and our college and universities to our campaign.

PLASTIC FREE ALLIES

We want to help grow our plastic-free movement by organising community events across the borough, ranging from community clean-ups to mass unwraps to fundraising events. The more people participating in Plastic Free Communities, the greater the success we will achieve.

PLASTIC FREE EVENTS

4

5

In order to make our campaign a success, we want to set up a steering group of local stakeholders (including council representatives and a flagship business employee) to meet regularly to discuss the progress of our campaign and to organise completing the application for official Plastic Free Community status.