European Green Capital 2016 launches campaign against plastic bags

The City of Ljubljana has launched a campaign against plastic bags with the slogan “I’m not lasting, but therefore less annoying. I’m a biodegradable bag.” with the aim of reducing the use of plastic bags which are very harmful to the environment.

The City of Ljubljana has developed the campaign within the framework of the title Ljubljana, European Green Capital 2016, and in addition to the City Administration it involves all public institutes and companies operating under the umbrella of the City of Ljubljana. So next year all involved entities are committed to purchase and use only environment-friendly bags instead of plastic ones.

The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness on the harmful impact of plastic bags on the environment – it takes as long as 100 years for them to decompose in nature. On the other hand biodegradable bags disintegrate along with their contents into compost which makes new plants grow, closing the natural cycle, and therefore they are not an additional burden for the environment.

Within the scope of preliminary activities at the Central Market the public company LPT has started distributing biodegradable bags to vendors renting stalls in Ljubljana’s markets. The company is going to distribute without any charge 127,000 biodegradable bags made from corn starch and 600 bags made from Japanese knotweed, the product of the pilot project for the production of paper from Japanese knotweed headed by the Department for Environmental Protection of the City Administration of the City of Ljubljana.

As of the beginning of next year vendors renting stalls in Ljubljana’s markets are going to be allowed to use only environment-friendly bags and no longer plastic ones (they are going to purchase biodegradable bags themselves).

With the reduction of plastic bags use in markets we want to stress the responsible attitude of us all towards the environment and at the same time encourage customers to use their own shopping bags or baskets which would further reduce the use of different types of packaging.