What started as a task for a small church congregation, has spread city wide.
Reverend Shawn Redden says at Visions United Church, they have always put a focus on environmental issues.
This year, for Lent, they challenged their members to fast from using plastic bags and bottles and disposable coffee cups.
Now they’ve created a petition that is open to the public, that calls for a by-law to ban plastic grocery bags.
“We only did this for our own congregation when we started out, but we thought maybe we should give some other people an opportunity. As we talked about it, we thought that we should keep going with this challenge.”
They put together a petition and presented it to our City Council
“That’s when we specifically chose plastic bags. Everything begins with a small step,” Redden says.
They’re hoping they’ll get signatures from right across the Tri-Communities.
“This is not a huge action. it is one thing. It is quite simple. Yes, it has an effect on retailers, but there is no reason this can’t be happening pretty soon,” Redden says.
The petition is available on their website.