Waipawa great-grandmother takes a stand for the environment

Bea Ridgway, a great-grandmother of seven from Waipawa, will be outside supermarkets and stores with her sign urging shoppers not to use environmentally-unfriendly plastic bags.

You're never too old and it's never too late.

At age 85, Bea Ridgway, a great-grandmother of seven from Waipawa, has become an environmental activist.

She has pent some of her pension money on a professionally-made placard that urges shoppers to ditch environmentally-unfriendly plastic bags in favour of carry bags.

Shoppers can expect to see Bea outside CHB's two supermarkets holding her sign to encourage more people to make the switch, but says she never expected to have to start crusading to save the world from plastic bags at her age.

Bea wants fewer plastic bags ending up in landfills and in waterways.

"But someone has to. I've used my own carry bags for donkey's years so there's no reason why other [shoppers] can't. It has to stop."

Bea expected her quiet campaign to attract some funny looks from supermarket customers, but she was seriously concerned about the environmental harm being done by the large number of plastic bags ending up in landfills, and finding their way into waterways.

"They get into the rivers and out to sea and eventually kill the fish. There's TV programmes where they cut open the fish and their stomachs are full of plastic. Well, that's terrible. It's scary and it can't go on."

Mrs Ridgeway said the attitudes of supermarket staff, as well as shoppers, had to change.
"What really bugs me is when you go to the checkout, they [the operators] immediately reach for a plastic bag to put your stuff in every time."

Bea has found a fan in CHB mayor Alex Walker.

"It's fabulous to see Mrs Ridgway so passionate about this issue," said Ms Walker, who was one of 65 local body mayors and chairs who signed a letter at Local Government New Zealand's recent annual conference calling on the Government to introduce a levy on single-use plastic bags.

"I was very quick to support Wellington mayor Justin Lester in his call for a plastic bag levy as I was shocked at the volume of plastic shopping bags at our landfill. It had a very strong impact on me during our district tour straight after [last year's] elections," Ms Walker said.

She pointed out that, locally, a few businesses were engaging with a new initiative called "boomerang bags," which made and distributed reusable bags.

New World Waipukurau was also giving its customers a discount of five cents off their grocery bill for every reusable bag they brought in, she said.

New World Waipukurau Gerard Kennedy said in the six months the scheme had been running, more than 56,000 discounts had been given to his customers, which he said had equated to 250,000 fewer plastic bags leaving his supermarket.

"This is a conservative number. We love our customers who bring us their own bags to pack."

His store offered two sorts of reusable bags for sale, as well as a chilled frozen option, ranging upward in price from $1.99, and also gave away reusable bags at least three times a year.

He said Bea was welcome to stand outside his supermarket with her sign.

"I won't be giving her her marching orders unless she upsets any customers, which is pretty unlikely. I have spoken personally with her, and found her warm and with a genuine concern."

Australian-based Progressive, owners of Countdown in Waipukurau, said they were happy for Bea to promote her cause outside their store - and also wanted to offer her reusable bags to hand out to their customers.

A spokesman said the company sold 430,000 reusable bags nationally last year, an increase of 130 per cent from the previous year.

He said the supermarket giant would support a levy on plastic bags, if it applied to all retailers and if the proceeds went to environmental and waste reduction charities so no-one profited from the levy.