THE chair of a Bude-based environmental and anti-plastics project has praised Bude-Stratton Town Council on its consideration to the environment.

Deb Rosser, chair of A Greener Bude and founder of ReFILL Bude, attended the full council meeting of Bude-Stratton Town Council on Thursday, October 4.

An agenda item concerning the formation of an environmental policy for the council took her interest, and she decided to attend to listen to the outcome, and praise councillors on their decision to consider this idea.

The idea was originally put forward by Cllr Simon Browning, a key member to local project Bude Friends of the Earth, who was unable to attend the meeting that evening, but forwarded on his idea for a new environmental group and policy to represent the council.

Deb told the meeting during the 15 minutes’ public speaking time: “I’m delighted to see that councillors are drawing up a plan to create an environmental policy. With my A Greener Bude head on, we are all very pleased and have our fingers crossed that this goes through. We offer our full support.”

Deb founded the ReFILL initiative in 2014, after sitting in a beach hut with BeachCare officer for the South West, Neil Hembrow, and speaking about the noticeable and vast amount of plastic waste found on Bude beaches.

As a regular beach cleaner for her local beach, Crooklets, teacher Deb was the brainchild of a simple, yet highly effective and successful idea — reusable water bottles to reduce the number of single-use plastic bottles bought in shops, and, later, reusable bamboo-based coffee cups, to help prevent the purchase of single-use plastic takeaway cups from coffee shops.

All proceeds from the products would go to local charity, the Friends of Bude Sea Pool. This idea created a spark nationwide, and Deb’s original idea for ReFILL has now taken off in towns and cities across the UK — including Bristol, Brighton and even London.

More recently, A Greener Bude was established in February 2018, combining a variety of Bude-based environmental groups and coming up with projects to roll out throughout Bude to make the town more sustainable.

Since its establishment at the beginning of the year, it has managed to set up a Coastal Recycling point outside Rosie’s Kitchen, provide sustainable products to eateries and restaurants around the town with the Happy Turtle Company (created by Rosie’s Kitchen owner Claire Giner) and is in the final steps of welcoming a refill station to the Triangle in Bude, where people will be able to fill their water bottles for free.

During the discussion to consider setting up a working party to draft an environmental policy for the council, at Cllr Browning’s request, mayor Bob Willingham said this could be ‘crucial’.

He said: “It’s important we record our thoughts on this. It’s crucial.”

Acting town clerk and responsible finance officer for the council, Keith Cornwell, read out Cllr Browning’s email, which said the council should have an environmental policy in place as they currently do not have one. He also said this policy would receive a lot of support from the people of Bude.

Cllr Willingham started discussions by suggesting Cllr Browning should have free hand to lead this group.

Mr Cornwell said: “Simon wants a working group and would like to see the group consult with residents too.”

In response, Cllr Willingham said: “I propose we set up a working party to discuss the environmental policy that Simon can lead.”

The vote was unanimous. Volunteers to assist Cllr Browning in the working group were Cllrs Willingham, Tony Gibbs and Paul Tilzey.