Local businesses have been named 'plastic free champions' by Plastic Free Kenilworth, recognising their commitment to helping the planet.

There are no 10 Plastic Free Business Champions in Kenilworth with three local cafes - Wedge, Whitemore's Café and Albion Street Kitchen - now added to the list.

May's Home Shopping and Alison's Driving School have also received the accolade.

It was the "great pleasure" of Mayor of Kenilworth Cllr Alix Dearing to present the businesses with their "well-deserved" awards and celebrate their efforts with the community at the end of March.

"This is fantastic news and it shows that our community really does care about plastic pollution and what a danger it is to our health and ecosystem," said Plastic Free Kenilworth Chair Alison Firth..

"Our business champions use paper bags instead of plastic bags, carboard boxes for takeaways rather than plastic containers, wooden cutlery instead of plastic for takeaways, biodegradable tea bags instead of tea bags with plastic in, only supplying glass and tinned drinks rather than plastic drinking bottles - fantastic!"

Cllr Alix Dearing (left) and Alison Firth (right) present the award to Wedge (image via Plastic Free Kenilworth)

Since opening for the first time in September 2023, Albion Street Kitchen has been committed to finding alternatives to single use plastics, from its cutlery to its takeaway containers.

While this is more expensive for the street food business, owner Joseph Rayappan said it is worth the extra outlay.

"We are encouraged by this award," he said.

"Since beginning we always wanted to not use plastics, we always wanted to be plastic free.

"It is not easy, and it costs more, but we want to stick with that as one of our principles.

"We are really pleased and thankful for Plastic Free Kenilworth, and for Alison and the local community."

Whitemoor's cafe is one of the ten Plastic Free Business Champions in Kenilworth (image via Plastic Free Kenilworth)

Taking up the challenge to make Kenilworth a Plastic Free Community began when when Alison was Mayor of Kenilworth in 2019/20, choosing this charity to support during her tenure.

Inspired by Warwick and Leamington Plastic Free Communities, the group embarked on completing the five objectives of the scheme which are:

• Passing a town council motion to support the scheme
• Organising community action and events; like litter picks and talks.
• Gaining community allies like The Kenilworth Centre and the Talisman Theatre
• Bringing together a steering group to keep the project moving
• Get as many locally run businesses as possible to ditch at least three items of single use plastic.

"Plastic pollution is a silent threat choking our oceans, suffocating marine life, and poisoning our planet," Alison explained.

"For example, a plastic bag alone can take anywhere from 10 to 1000 years to degrade in nature but even then, they break down in to smaller plastics known as micro plastics which persist in the environment for much longer and pose serious threats to wildlife and ecosystems.

"Presently there are five "trash islands" in our oceans, the biggest of which is in the Pacific Ocean and is 1.6 million square kilometres, and these are predominately made up of plastic.

"Depressing isn't it! But all is not lost because the Surfers Against Sewage scheme; 'Plastic Free Communities' encourages and incentivises communities to break free from single use plastic dependency and embrace sustainable solutions."

As individuals we can all make changes that will help our planet, for example not buying drinks in plastic bottles and instead having a reusable drink bottle that we refill, not using plastic bags each time we shop and instead reusing one we have, taking our own refillable coffee container to a coffee shop for a takeaway coffee instead of using a plastic lined paper cup.

Kenilworth is on its way to becoming a Plastic Free Town (image via Plastic Free Kenilworth)

All these small changes make a big difference, the group explained.

"Until governments across the globe decide to ban unnecessary plastic use making it illegal it is really up to individuals, public and private businesses and community groups to make the change themselves and we deeply respect this as it can sometimes be more expensive providing plastic free alternatives," Alison added.

"We have almost achieved Plastic Free Community status for Kenilworth so watch this space as we increase our efforts to help local businesses go single use plastic free and if you'd like to know more please contact our group at [email protected] or message us on our Facebook page.

"Despite the seriousness of the problem our group are a jolly bunch who have good fun working in the community and ridding our planet of as much single use plastic as possible. Why not join us!"