Petition details
Stop single use plastic in Tower Hamlets
We the undersigned petition the council to Eliminate all single-use plastic within council-managed buildings and facilities, by 2021, and eliminate single-use plastic from its supply chain, by 2025. Request and encourage all businesses with which we engage, via our procurement network, to support the banning of single-use plastic from their place of work. Ask the waste management team to prepare a report considering how they could promote the reduction of single-use plastic across the Borough, including supporting plastic-free initiatives such as plastic-free communities and plastic-free schools, and to highlight areas of further lobbying to central government by both collection and waste disposal authorities, and for this report to be prepared and then presented at council within 6 months.
Having recognised, both at a local level and a national level, that we are living through an unprecedented climate and ecological emergency, we know that radical action is needed to reduce our contribution to anthropogenic climate-change and environmental breakdown.
We acknowledge that the prevalence of single-use plastics in packaging and manufacturing of everyday items is a significant contributor to this process, both because it is carbon-intensive to manufacture and because over 50% of the plastic we produce is used only once, then thrown away.
Recent research has estimated that over 8 million metric tons of plastic waste end up in the oceans each year, endangering marine life and breaking down into chemical compounds which subsequently end up in a food chain that directly affects human life the world over.
This Petition ran from 03/06/2019 to 09/09/2019 and has now finished.
256 people signed this Petition.
Council response
Thank you for the petition raised at Full Council on 18th September
regarding the above.
Tower Hamlets Council is committed to tackling environmental
issues including the unnecessary waste arising from single use
plastics.
Our recently adopted Waste Strategy shows how we intend to
eradicate single use plastics, where practically possible, in
Council buildings and work with local residents and businesses to
reduce overall use in the borough. The link to the Waste Strategy
can be found at https://www.towerhamlets.qov.uk/Documents/WasteStrateqv
final.pdf
Six new drinking water fountains are being installed in parks and gardens in the borough to encourage people to use a re-usable drinking water bottle when they are out and about in the borough.
Back in March we launched the Staff Sustainability pledge. We encouraged staff through a number of stalls in Council offices to sign up to the pledge and to commit to becoming more sustainable at work. Any staff member that signed up to the pledge received a reusable bamboo cup as this was to support the first action which saw the removal of single use plastic cups from the Council’s Offices in June. This is now looking to be rolled out to other Council buildings and Idea Stores.
The Council's Communications, Facilities Management and Waste Management teams are working on other initiatives to reduce plastic waste. One of these is to remove single use plastics from vending machines and to remove plastic cups from the coffee machines. We are meeting monthly to look at a wide range of sustainability issues to improve the sustainability of the Council.
Ann Sutcliffe Corporate Director Place Directorate
Pre meeting Council response:
Tower Hamlets council is committed to tackling environmental issues
including the unnecessary use waste arising from single use
plastics.
Our recently adopted Waste Strategy
https://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/Documents/WasteStrategy_final.pdf
shows how we intend to eradicate single use plastics where
practically possible in council buildings and work with local
residents and businesses to reduce overall use in the borough.