From Kent News. Dover Grammar School for Girls pupil, Amber Bytheway, launched a campaign with help from local environmental group Deal With It.
Over the next 10 months, the 16-year-old needs to get 100,000 signatures to force a debate in the House of Commons.
Her e-petition calls to banish plastic bags, explaining the detrimental impact they are having on the world’s oceans and marine life and the need to cut the amount of waste sent to landfill.
“Approximately one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die from ingestion or entanglement in plastics every single year,” she said.
“Not only that, but the littering of plastic bags spoils our beautiful environment.
“Plastic bags are made from polyethylene, known as polythene which is toxic and seeing as plastic bags cannot biodegrade, the pieces photodegrade, only getting smaller and smaller and smaller contaminating our waterways, soils and oceans - even entering the food chain, including human beings’.”
She added that the bags were made using precious finite oil resources which were becoming scarce.
“I think it is really sad what is happening to our planet so I decided I would try and do something about it,” she said.
“We have to change our ways now, because our planet cannot sustain our way of living.
“The number of plastic bags consumed in the past year rose by 333 million and it is time the Government knuckled down and made a change.”
To sign go to http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/12786
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