Plastic-free Selkirk? It's in the bag
THIS week Selkirk has been preparing for its attempt to become one of the country's first plastic bag-free towns.
Organisers of the scheme made it 'Bring your own bag week', to give people a dry-run for the changeover at the end of March.
Shoppers were asked to bring reusable bags to help Selkirk's bid to banish the plastic pollutants, which clog up landfill sites, litter streets and rivers, and can damage marine life.
Organiser Jenna Agate said people seemed to be taking the idea on board: "People are thinking about it and using their own bags. I'm amazed when I go around Selkirk, it's wonderful!
"The main problem at the moment is that there are two or three traders in town that have very large quantities of bags that they've printed up.
"They've spent good, hard-earned money on that, and I'd like to be able to raise more money to be able to reimburse them for their costs, and dispose of them in an ecological way.
"I don't know what to do yet. The problem with extending deadlines is that you lose the impetus, so I don't want to do that."
She also asked shoppers to save up any paper carrier bags they might have and drop them into four shops in the town which currently hand out previously-used plastic bags.
This will help them switch to handing out used paper bags instead – the shops are Bow Wows, Barnados, Scott Hislop and the Station Road post office.
On February 18 the competition will close for local schoolchildren to design a logo for 500 sturdy fabric shopping bags, which Jenna and her colleagues will hand out in the Market Place on April 4.
As Selkirk got into the swing of the bring-a-bag week, The Wee Paper joined Jenna and fellow working group member Pat Neil on the High Street to see how the idea was catching on.
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Weather for Selkirk
Sunday 05 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 1 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -1 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North
