3 Zoos around the South West have joined the war on packaging.
Paignton Zoo, Newquay Zoo and Living Coasts are beginning to phase out packaging by bringing in bags of sweets.
The bags of sweets are in partnership with the Cambridge Confectionary Company, who supply delicious, handmade chocolate, bespoke labelled confectionary and innovative fighting single use plastics.
The zoos which are owned, operated and maintained by the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust are removing regular plastic bags.
Plastic Packaging take decades to degrade
Plastic bags, can often take decades to fully biodegrade and even then have been known to be responsible for leaving behind a residue in the soil.
Nigel Baker, managing director of the Cambridge Confectionary company was inspired to make the move after watching BBC’s Blue Planet and being left feeling appalled by how much plastic ends up in the oceans.
A study in 2017, has recently found that there are over 8 million metric tons of plastic enters our oceans eat year.
Battle to end our reliance on plastic
Torbay Council has recently signed up to the Devon Refill scheme in an attempt to encourage us all to use less in the way of plastic and to refill our empty bottles at designated refill sites.
Phil Knowling, spokesperson for the Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust said:
As a wildlife charity, we’re hugely concerned about waste plastic and its effect on the environment. This is a terrific innovation – we’re very pleased to be stocking compostable packaging. It’s one more thing we can do to raise awareness and help make the world a better place.
The new bags, that are being phased in across all 3 zoos, are fully certified and manufactured from sustainably sourced trees.
These trees then converted into a kind of pulp and then into a liquified cellulose solution.
In turn this is then made into a transparent and solid film which is coated and cut to size.
Nigel Baker, managing director of Cambridge Confectionary company concluded:
The BBC footage about how much plastic ends up in the oceans really affected us all here and spurred us to do something about our packaging immediately.  We are pleased to be leading the way in our industry and hope other retailers will join us in this revolution.It’s a first step for us and can eliminate around 80% of our single use plastic packaging but we won’t be satisfied until this number hits 100%, which is a huge challenge.
