Tradewinds Gift Shop also has a range of high quality fabric bags and Fair Trade bags that can be purchased.

Living Coasts has actively campaigned locally about plastics bags and held many special events aimed at children and adults to raise awareness of this issue. Recently, we joined forces with the Morsbags initiative which organizes “sociable guerrilla bagging” and have held a number of workshops at Living Coasts and Paignton Zoo to make re-useable fabric bags out of material. According to the Morsbags organization, each bag made has the potential to eliminate hundreds of plastic bags. We have organized a number of special events to give away these Morsbags to members of the public and encourage people not to use plastic ones.

Every year an estimated 17 billion plastic bags are given away in the UK. Of this only around 1 in 20 are recycled. These bags take over 450 years to degrade and meanwhile cause massive environmental problems, in particular within the marine environment.

At least 144 species of marine animals are known to have become entangled in marine litter and this litter is responsible for suffocating and strangling one million seabirds and 100,000 mammals worldwide annually. On top of this, plastic bags can resemble jellyfish in the marine environment. Animals such as turtles and seals eat them, blocking their stomachs and they often end up dying of starvation.

If the plastic isn’t consumed, it can wash up on the shore, or just stay on land, causing problems for animals there.
In China, it is known as “white pollution” and blocks coral, stopping it from growing or surviving.

Click here to go to the Morsbags website and make your own: www.morsbags.com