Kew Gardens Plastic Bag Free - Launch Party

Some people coming out of Kew Gardens London Underground Station last night would have been surprised to walk into a crowd of people listening to musicians, drinking wine, chatting to local environmentalists (The Ecologist editor - Zac Goldsmith - pictured below), snacking on olives & not carrying plastic bags. As from today Kew Gardens becomes the first place in London to go "Plastic Bag Free".


50 local traders pledged to no longer give out plastic bags and there was one notable exception. I blogged about this a week ago saying that Kew was not quite plastic bag free yet.

The party was good fun and actually did engender a community spirit which is what one of the traders - Mark form the Kew Traders Association (pictured below) was really keen on saying.


I got to chat properly to Sara Novakovic the owner of Olivers Wholefoods store - where I first saw the wonderful Onya bags that we used for Nom Nom Nom.


Also had a great conversation with Ulrike the owner of Lloyd's of Kew - lovely second hand & antiquarian bookshop in Kew. There were loads of kids, my next door neighbour came along, I chatted to other neighbours & people from the Kew Society including their chairperson Michael Glazebrook (pictured below) who had all brilliantly organised the whole event.


Jenny Tonge the outspoken former Lib Dem MP was also there - she got there a bit late as a fire at Earl's Court had caused major delays on the District Line. She spoke passionately about the effect of plastic bags on the environment and how it was amazing that the UK's government were being really slow to follow leaders in countries like France, Australia and India who appeared to be doing more about plastic bags.


As I said before I'm not a card carrying green eco warrrior, I don't recycle everything, I wear leather shoes, I eat meat, I drive a small car, I buy things from Primark & Tesco, I probably use more electricity than I should, I've flown to Blackpool. But I am becoming more and more aware of how doing less of the above can make a difference, particularly if more and more people all do less of the above. Going to GeeKyoto made me think this even more, as being green doesn't necessarily mean being preachy & worthy and can be fun.

If you'd like to see some of my other pictures of the Greener Kew Launch Party, they're here and I'm sure many will go on Greener Kew's blog. Apparently BBC Radio London will be interviewing the brill award winning butchers Pether's of Kew between 7am & 7.30am today to talk about the whole campaign, and there may be something on BBC London TV tonight.

Finally I took a rather strange picture of a Zac Goldsmith "not a plastic bag" bag at Kew Gardens Tube station a week or so ago.


Not sure if the sticky tape cross was to hold the bag together or whether it was a sign that they don't Back Zac anymore. The mind boggles, but then again, Kew is a fairly unique pseudo village - with some fairly unique residents!