City to Sea

City to Sea is a Bristol-based campaigns group founded in 2015 to stem the tide of marine plastic pollution; from city to sea. We create and deliver innovative campaigns that change and challenge the way everyday folk like ourselves use and dispose of single-use plastics. By engaging communities, working with retailers and lobbying manufacturers and local government to adopt new practices and policies, we aim to reverse the trend for disposable items in order to safeguard our seas for the future. Our vision is for the UK's waterways and coastlines to be strewn with sticks, sand and seaweed … not plastic! www.citytosea.org.uk

New Campaign Campaigns

  • Switch to paper cotton buds
    Plastic cotton bud stems are the number one item of plastic, sewage-related debris on our beaches and rivers [1] - yet retailers could help prevent this by switching the stick from plastic to paper. In the marine environment, plastics can be eaten by marine life, often with fatal consequences. Plastic is found in the stomachs of Loggerhead Turtles, Seabirds and many species of UK-caught fish. And pieces that don't get eaten break down into microplastics, forming part of a dangerous plastic smog in our seas. Retailers are listening - earlier this year, Waitrose and Johnson & Johnson announced they'd make the change to paper, and the Coop and Marks and Spencers sell paper-stem buds. Now we need to make sure the others do the same. Tesco, Sainsburys, Boots, ASDA, Morrisons, Lidl, Aldi, Superdrug and Wilko are currently reviewing their policies on cotton buds ... which is why we need to show them how many of us support the switch to paper! Even paper stem cotton buds shouldn’t be flushed down the loo. But if they are, they're less likely to pass through sewage filters and will quickly biodegrade if they escape. So please sign and share our petition to ask the remaining retailers to Switch the Stick from plastic to paper. Your voice will be heard! Thanks, Natalie and the City to Sea Team [1] Beachwatch Report 2015, Marine Conservation Society
    157,407 of 200,000 Signatures
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  • Introduce a tax (levy) on throwaway plastic
    The UK produces billions of pieces of throwaway plastics such as plastic straws, plastic cutlery, plastic cups and coffee cups every year. Yet a huge percentage of these are not recycled - instead they end up littering our streets, our beaches and washing out to sea where they pollute our oceans and harm marine wildlife, which we then end up consuming! One of the most effective solutions is to introduce a small tax on throwaway items (straws, cups, cutlery, takeaway boxes, coffee cups, beer cups) at the point of sale. This has been incredibly successful with plastic carrier bags, where a small 5p charge has resulted in a reduction of over 80% in use in supermarkets. The tax collected should be ring-fenced for investment in anti-pollution strategies and solutions that work towards a circular economy where ‘waste’ is designed out of our system. In the recent budget, the government announced that they would investigate the possibility of bringing in a plastic tax to the UK, but nothing's confirmed yet. Please sign the petition to show your support for the idea, and help stop plastic pollution at source.
    243,517 of 300,000 Signatures
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