A market celebrating sustainability will be held at Victoria Hall on April 26 in the centre of Sheffield featuring live music, food, drinks and gifts – but you’ll need to bring your own bags, cups and cutlery.
Sheffield Action on Plastic are running the event at the venue in Norfolk Street with its aim to make living a sustainable life easy, reducing single use plastic and the focus on reducing plastic cups.
Gregg Hewitt, chair of Action on Plastic, said: “I would love to see more events adopt sustainability measures, I’d like to see more reusable cups being used at events in Sheffield.”
Bringing your own bags, cups and cutlery is the message that Sheffield Action on Plastic are wanting to promote people not leaving the house without their reusable’s.
Mr Hewitt said: “We encourage people to bring their own reusable’s, bring their own water bottles, bring their own cups, bring their own containers when people are out and about.”
The companies which are involved in the market make sure that all the products are plastic free. The companies have agreed to take a pledge with Sheffield Action on Plastic to reduce and limit single use of plastics within the businesses. Plus promoting plastic-free activities and events within the community.
Live music at the event will be provided by students from Sheffield’s universities. Mr Hewitt said his team were incredibly proud to have students performing and to be able to give them opportunities to take part in a community event.
A spokesperson for Sheffield Litter Pickers said: “We are all concerned about the vast amount of single use plastics. Great that Action on Plastic are trying to get venues and outlets to help introduce change by the use of reusable cups.”
Action on Plastic is holding the market due to the 721 million single-use plates which are used every year in the UK with only 10% of these plates being recycled. The group also highlighted that 90 billion plastic packages are thrown away every year across the UK.
Mr Hewitt said: “I’ve been to events before and seen bins full lined up with like all these cardboard containers or people have just had some food and thrown it in the bin and actually you can’t recycle it because food contaminates, if food ends up contaminating cardboard then you can’t recycle it.”
