Pregnancy Help Dunedin rejects plastic

In the 12-month period 1/7/15 – 30/6/16 Pregnancy Help Dunedin provided families with:

25,639 items of baby and children’s clothing.

1083 items of baby bedding.

1088 reusable nappies.

At the very heart of what Pregnancy Help does is good environmental practice – people reusing items instead of buying everything brand new, people donating items so that they can be passed on to other people, and people swapping smaller items for larger items as their baby grows.

We have always relied on the use of plastic bags to put items in when providing them, but have become increasingly aware that this somewhat lets down our good environmental practice of supporting the reusing of such a large amount of practical support. We also became increasingly concerned about our use of something made out of non-renewable resources.

“It is reported that New Zealanders use around 1.6 billion plastic bags each year ( Lyn Mayes, manager of the Public Place Recycling Scheme July 2015) and we decided that we wanted to reduce our contribution to this” says Chris Ottley, Pregnancy Help Dunedin Manager “We were delighted to be able to secure sponsorship from the Foodstuffs Community Foundation for reusable bags and to support this by adopting a very simple new strategy that when have reusable bags available we will use them in preference to plastic”.

“As a Mum myself, I use re-usable bags a lot, and so it was with pleasure that between Mosgiel New World and the Foodstuffs Community Trust we were able to donate such a worthy community group like Pregnancy Help 550 bags to use instead of plastic” says Jo Stafford Owner/ Operator Mosgiel New World.

“Our use of reusable bags is proving to be very popular and the change has been very simple to make. When we are giving someone the gift of some baby items, putting the items into a reusable bag rather than a plastic bag seems to reinforce how much we care both in terms of the impact on the family and the broader impact on the environment” says Chris.

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