Last week, Richard took part in a litter pick around Etonbury Woods in Stotfold with constituent Coren Munday as part of the Great British September Clean Up.
Coren reached out to Richard during lockdown to discuss her awareness raising campaign about single use plastics and litter. Coren has set her online community the challenge of going out every Wednesday until the end of 2020 to collect rubbish within a mile or more of their home and then taking a picture holding their rubbish along with the miles they have walked tagging SeaForYourselfco on social media. Coren’s aim is for us all to collectively walk the distance around the world collecting rubbish. That’s 24,901 miles!
Richard joined Coren on a litter pick near her home at the end of September to help promote awareness about litter and plastic pollution and add his miles to her campaign. If you would like to know more visit Coren's facebook page.
Richard said: “Coren is passionate about the environment and her clean-up campaign is a brilliant initiative that will improve the environment and our local communities. I would encourage other constituents to get out in their communities and pick up litter. We all have a responsibility to clean up our country.
“I was also delighted that the ban on supplying plastic straws and stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds came into force in England on 1st October, marking yet another major step in the Government’s fight against single-use plastic waste to protect our environment and clean up our oceans.
“I know that many of my constituents share my passion about protecting our environment and this builds on the governments key actions on plastics include a world-leading ban on microbeads, consulting on introducing a deposit return scheme to drive up the recycling of single-use drinks containers and committing to a ban on the export of polluting plastic waste to non-OECD countries.
“I also welcome the government’s commitment to introduce a new world-leading tax on plastic packaging which does not meet a minimum threshold of at least 30% recycled content from April 2022 to encourage greater use of recycled plastic.”
