PLASTIC Free Camelford is looking for anyone with a keen eye for sewing to get in touch, so a collection of fabric bags can be distributed to shops and businesses around the town.

The team behind Plastic Free Camelford, a group that is aiming towards single-use plastic-free status for their town, are appealing for sewers to get in touch, along with people who may have old and unwanted materials and fabrics, in the hope the town’s shops and businesses will be able to start encouraging their customers to avoid single-use plastic carrier bags.

This comes as a whale was found washed up in Indonesia recently, with the contents of its stomach including all manner of plastics and harmful items — including 25 plastic bags.

Clare Monson, from Plastic Free Camelford, said the response to their campaign so far has been positive, and only hopes this will continue and grow with the support of other local people.

“The response has been amazing! We are really pleased to see so many people on board and wanting to help us make Camelford a single-use plastic free zone.

“We noticed that one of the biggest issues for small businesses is cost and replacing plastic bags with paper can be very costly for them, so to combat this we decided to all make fabric bags based on the Morsbag idea, which is really simple to make.”

Morsbags were created by Clare Mors, who was fed up of seeing plastic bags floating around her home city of London. The scheme has been adopted by groups all over the country, who sew and distribute the bags to local people and businesses to clamp down on the use of plastic bags.

Clare said: “The idea is that if as many people as possible make them we can then distribute them between local shops in Camelford in the new year. People can take one and use it when they need a bag instead of buying a plastic bag, and then return it to either the same shop or another shop as soon as possible.

“The idea isn’t for people to keep a bag each at home, just that they return them so that there is a constant supply around town for people to use. It’s something that has worked really well in other towns across the globe.”

Now Plastic Free Camelford are asking anyone with any experience in sewing, or those who can provide fabrics, to get in touch.

Clare added: “If anyone has any material that they can offer — this can be old curtains, duvets, pillow cases or t-shirts — or they can help sew, they can contact us via the Plastic Free Camelford Facebook page and we can arrange to get all of the materials to them.”