Plastic Ain't My Bag: The Launch

Tug. Tug. 'Excuse me?'
(Double take. Eventually, a glance down). 'Yes little boy'
'I notice that you're carrying a plastic bag.' (Gestures to bag)
'Well yes, how observant, I use it to carry my groceries in.' (Pat on the head)
'I'm not stupid. I'm just small.' (Uncomfortable, shifting British silence.)
'Did you know that it takes a bag 500 years for a plastic bag to decay in landfill, that it wastes the earth's precious natural resources and that at this clip we're likely to have exhausted the UK's landfill reserves by 2012?'
'Erm. No I did not'
'Can I give you one of We Are What We Do's 'Plastic Ain't My Bag' bags instead?' (Gestures to paper bag with pink logo)
'Will it make you go away little boy?'
(Rustle, rustle, swap)
'Consider it done.'

On Friday 4th May We Are What We Do launched our 'Plastic Ain't My Bag' campaign at Stratford Shopping Centre in East London. The centre was awash with stickers, posters, banners and helpers in Plastic Ain't My Bag t-shirts. The young people spoke with supermarket managers over their plastic bag policies, engaged with their local and national politicians and initiated spontaneous 'bag swaps' with confused, but mostly bemused, shoppers.

Dividing themselves up into groups the children and young people interviewed managers at Sainsburys, Morrisons, Mondos, Applejacks and The Theatre Royal. They asked for the manager's views on plastic bags and courted their ideas for reducing their use. In Sainsburys Amit, the manager, pledged his allegiance to the campaign and talked about how he has asked that Sainsburys change their 'scan and pack' policy so that shop assistants can ask first, and bag later, only if it's required. (This has subsequently been agreed by head office.) In Morrisons the children presented the manager with a selection of paintings of We Are What We Do actions to raise awareness and to be displayed by tills at point of sales.

Politically plastics were high on the agenda. The deputy mayor, Christine Bowden, was gamely papperazzi'd putting her Sainsburys shopping into a paper 'Plastic Ain't My Bag' carrier. And a large, assembled group talked to Stephen Timms about his plans to change the world (and specifically whether he had any plans to put a tax on plastic bags.) Elsewhere a group of secondary school students and sixth formers met with Lyn Brown, MP for West Ham, to discuss international policies and how initiatives have worked in other countries. Ms Brown, a proud owner of an exclusive, Anya Hindmarch 'I'm NOT a Plastic Bag' bag talked about how it's proved a talking point and how imperative it is to get people thinking about the issue and the role of grassroots campaigning in putting pressure on government to do the right thing.

Human roadblocks (with a very lax approach to border control) were set up, by the young people, at designated spots to offer shoppers the chance to swap their plastic bag for our paper ones. The voluntary bag amnesty proved a huge success as Tollgate's choir bellowed out their We Are What We Do song and it pealed throughout the centre's tannoy system.

The day's artwork was designed by longstanding friends of the movement, Antidote agency. And the day's vocal ambassadors came from assembled junior and secondary schools in the local, Newham area. Representatives from University of East London, Newham Sixth Form College and LSE also lent their support on the day.

We Are What We Do plans to visit shops in and around Stratford in the coming weeks to distribute 'Plastic Ain't My Bag' toolkits of posters, window stickers and shelf wobblers and to encourage them to become involved in our national Shop Wars leader board. If further retailers would like to get involved please feel free to contact frances.clarke@community-links.org

Plastic Ain't My Bag

Ideas must work through the brains and arms of men, or they are no better than dreams.'*

A wise man once said this. Right before he grabbed his canvas jute and dashed out the door. Our 'Plastic Ain't My Bag' campaign is We Are What We Do's nationwide appeal - to those brains and these arms - to help rid our shores of the plastic bag. It's a good dream. With your help we can make it our best idea.

This is We Are What We Do's first, nationwide campaign. What started with a book, and inspired actions, congregated on a website and now takes flight, off the page. We chose our Action 01: Decline Plastic Bags because, well, it seemed like an important time and a natural starting point. (If you're waiting for the Action 08: Take a Bath with Someone you Love Campaign, cool your heels tiger.)

Fact. UK consumers use an estimated ten billion bags a year. Each of these bags take 500 years to degrade. Fact. That's 167 bags person, with a one-way ticket to landfill. Fact. We can put an end to this. Last year ten thousand, four hundred and eighty nine of you found it relatively easy to decline plastic bags. (We know, you told us.) This year we aim to make it even easier. Our role in this campaign is not to lecture. Still less is our role to chide. Our role is to champion and support you, to measure your triumphs, mitigate your difficulties and make the occasional (irreverent) suggestion from the sidelines.

Over the course of the month-long campaign we'll provide a few tactical tools. We've created a 'The Art of Saying No' assertiveness course - the better to help you decline bags - and have an A-Z of bag activism. We are working with a community of retailers to help them get drastic around plastic (see Sainsbury's) and will be starring your stories in our website. We plan to measure the numbers of bags you decline with our on-line tracker. And we co-created a bag to raise awareness. (The 'I'm Not a Plastic Bag' Anya Hindmarch shopper. You may have seen it.) Plus we will be staging a day in Stratford where the entire community pushes the plastics issue as well as nudging you from your newspaper, congratulating you at the cash register and - who knows - maybe even prompting you from a billboard or two.

Ten years ago, scientist Richard Dawkins observed that one could 'have travelled thousands of miles through the United States and never see a baseball cap turned back to front.' Today the reverse baseball cap is ubiquitous. Punchline; behaviour is viral. And we humans learn quick. In Bangledesh and Zanzibar and Taiwan they haven't had plastic bags for years and are bearing up just fine. In Ireland and Denmark they introduced a tax on plastic bags - and nearly nobody died. It's worth remembering plastic bags have only been around since 1977. We've managed before.

If enough people act together, things get easier and worlds change. Or, as we like to say, Small changes x Lots of people = Big changes. Altogether now, 'Baby, Plastic Ain't My Bag.'

Plastic Ain't My Bag

*Ralph Waldo Emerson