PLANS to protect the environment and reduce plastic use in Glasgow are being devised.
A report to councillors sets out the dangers of single-use plastics and reveals the council’s plan for a plastics reduction strategy for the city.
Ideas include using the licensing process to ensure licensed premises and events reduce their use of plastic straws and other forms of single-use plastic, explore further installation of ‘top-up taps’ across the city and adding in plumbed-in water coolers to council premises, such as museums and libraries.
It will also look at how the council can reduce its own plastic waste, including packaging, and examine the possibility of creating Glasgow’s first ‘plastic free school’.
The school plan follows strong interest from a “significant number of young people” in the plastic reduction agenda, boosted by programmes such as Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Blue Planet’, the report claims.
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Other plans include collating a number of “potential asks” to the Scottish Government, relating to issues which the council has limited control over, such as further action to reduce the use of plastic bags and packaging.
The report, by George Gillespie, the Council’s Executive Director of Neighbourhoods and Sustainability, says widespread consultation will be carried out before the strategy is finalised.
Mr Gillespie said: “Plastic waste is both residual and toxic, endangering marine life especially and blighting the lives of human communities in parts of the developing world.
“There is a growing public sense that organisations and individuals need to take responsibility and take action to reduce, recycle and reuse plastics in order to prevent such material from becoming an increasing and almost permanent feature of the environment.”
“Plastic use and waste are global issues, but local action is where sustainable solutions will emerge from.
“There is a strong role for the Council to use its community leadership role to work with partners and communities to raise awareness of these issues, to educate people and to promote action across Glasgow.”
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