A week-long effort to organise a mass unwrap at Tesco supermarket has finally come to a disappointing end. This week is the national mass unwrap week run by Surfers Against Sewage who are the charity we are working to get Plastic Free Community status with. This would have been a great event in the town to raise awareness on single use plastics, particularly when we buy from supermarkets! https://www.sas.org.uk/organise-a-mass-unwrap/

After being told to go to head office (via another slow, useless company) and having to chase them 3 times I finally got the response which was that we could only carry out the event in the car park. As you can imagine, unwrapping plastic on a winter's afternoon outside is not going to end well. They also complained about the store congestion it may cause, despite the fact that we would have been buying everything that was going to be unwrapped and only causing a short delay at the checkout...

I have spoken to Surfers Against Sewage about our troubles and they said this is the first time they have heard a case like ours... showing how resistant our local Tesco are to supporting local initiatives. It's certainly tainted my view of an already offending store for their use of plastics and lack of fair trade support.

Surfer's against sewage said that next year they are going to be contacting head offices to get a policy that will allow us to carry out a mass unwrap with more ease. In the meantime I encourage you to shop at Abbots/Ansty/our local market where you can buy loose produce and where they will soon be selling loose grains like pasta, rice and oats packaging free!