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FREE CLOTH BAGS TO BAY RESIDENTS
Tasman District Council and the Golden Bay Bag Ladies are the FIRST in New Zealand to distribute FREE cloth shopping bags to their community, as they collaborate to encourage Golden Bay households to say NO to plastic shopping bags.
Funded by the Tasman District Council, the Golden Bay Bag Ladies are delivering the FREE cloth bag to each household in Golden Bay - oblivious to the downpour on the first day !
The 1500 households on the Refuse and Recycle Route will have their bag placed in their mail box; the 200 additional remoter households will be able to pick their bag up from the i-Site Information Centre in Takaka, or the Post Offices in Bainham and Collingwood. Says Nicola Basham, spokesperson for the Golden Bay Bag Ladies ³we felt that it was important to reach all the households in Golden Bay and decided to fund the additional 200 bags ourselves, out of previous fund raising activities, to supplement the TDC initiative.²
This is the latest in a series of activities by the Golden Bay Bag Ladies, to increase public awareness about the wasteful use of plastic shopping bags they are a waste of ever expensive, dwindling fossil fuels and they¹re often lethal to animals or marine life when they mistake the plastic litter for something to eat. It is shameful for communities to be stock piling the discarded plastic bags into landfills where they take hundreds of years to break down into plastic particles which then leak into the waterways and the foodchain. 
Photo caption: Golden Bay Bag Ladies Helen Pearson (left) and Alison Ramsay (right) distributing the FREE cloth bag.
Hazel Pearson, one of the Bag Ladies distributing the bags commented "It is fantastic that the Tasman District Council is so supportive of our campaign, and great to be able to give people a FREE re-usable cloth bag, so that they can have it handy for all their shopping trips."
"People need time and motivation to change their current shopping habits" commented Alison Ramsay, another of the Golden Bay Bag Ladies - "and our experience is when a person knows the facts, has an alternative to use when they go shopping (like cloth bags, baskets or cardboard boxes) and when they realize that they CAN "do their bit" for a greener, cleaner planet, then that's when they decide to say NO to the plastic shopping bags offered."
A further 200 remoter households in the region will be able to pick their bag up from the i-Site Information Centre in Takaka, or the Post Offices in Bainham and Collingwood. Says Nicola Basham, spokesperson for the Golden Bay Bag Ladies "we felt that it was important to reach all the households in Golden Bay and decided to fund the additional 200 bags ourselves, out of previous fund raising activities, to supplement the TDC initiative."
Lorna Longford, probably the oldest serving Post Mistress in New Zealand in the small village of Bainham, here outside her General Store with Nicola Basham, was delighted to be of service and hand out the bags to the locals.