Empowering communities to take action on single-use plastics
"Welcome to Sick of Plastic! The success of the Sick of Plastic Campaign has very much been driven by the public's vision and energy for change. I am so excited for this next wave of community powered action!" - Claudia Tormey, Sick of Plastic Campaign Manager
A few hours a week or a few days a month - it’s up to you. Meet as often as you need, chat and organise online.
Elevate your individual action into collective action, and increase your impact. You have already embraced zero waste and are avoiding single use plastics wherever you can but you are sick of seeing plastic all over supermarket shelves, ending up in our streets, parks, rivers and beaches. You know that to achieve wide scale change we need to make producers and decision makers listen and act. But to make them listen – we need to come together to make our individual actions and voices heard.
Be the first to set up a Sick of Plastic group in your local area, or join one already active. If you have a local Tidy Towns or a clean up crew, why not collaborate and come together!
Select the supermarket you want to target. Do a supermarket audit to find out how they are performing on plastic packaging and find out what their plans are to act on plastic.
Organise a day of action at your chosen supermarket, gather your troops and choose your date. Create awareness about your action a few weeks beforehand so more people can take part by posting the Shop and Drop poster around your local area.
The action is simple, when you are doing your grocery shop leave your plastic packaging behind after checkout to show supermarkets that they need to take action and eliminate unnecessary plastic packaging. Simply remove the plastic packaging from your broccoli, aubergine, etc and leave it in the bin provided.
By notifying your supermarket manager in advance they can provide a designated area for leaving plastic packaging after checkout, so customers are not causing delays in queues or disrupting staff. Nominate a few volunteers to collect petition signatures and inform the public about the campaign.
Present your supermarket audit to your supermarket manager so they can see where they can make improvements. Remind them how many people took part in the day of action and that their customers want them to act..
These are what we are asking supermarkets to do in our petition:
1. Offer more items without packaging, such as fruit and vegetables (without plastic trays, wrapping and nets).
2. Make their own-brand packaging easily compostable or recyclable, and use less plastic.
3. Demand, through their purchasing power, that other brands they carry have easily compostable or recyclable packaging, and use less plastic.
4. Blaze a trail in Ireland by implementing a plastic free aisle, as has been done in the Netherlands.
5. Provide items in bulk, where possible, to reduce packaging.
6. Allow shoppers use their own containers to buy dried goods, buying only what they need.
Ask your supermarket to make the pledge to Break Free From Plastic and mark your supermarket’s pledge on the map.
Keep an eye on your supermarket to make sure they keep their promise to break free from plastic. Move on to the next supermarket of choice, and repeat above steps.
