1Leisure has been awarded a prestigious Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) Award in the ‘plastic free community’ category.
The SAS accreditation recognised a range of environment-friendly initiatives that 1Leisure introduced at its Isle of Wight Council-run sites at Sandown, Medina and Westridge.
These included including holding a plastic bottle amnesty, replacing plastic bags with reusable gym bags as part of the gym member induction pack, removing paper cups and handing out reusable water bottles, replacing paper towels with reusable cloth and removing plastic cutlery from all sites.
Surfers Against Sewage is a national charity which campaigns about environmental issues, from water pollution, climate change to plastic pollution.
1Leisure manager, Allan Bridges, said:
“We’re really honoured to have been awarded ‘plastic free community’ status by SAS and I would also like to thank our council waste service and Amey for providing recycling bins on our plastic bottle amnesty day and most of all, our customers for joining us on this journey.
“We will continue to source alternatives to single use plastics where possible and continue to raise awareness about this to our community.”
The award was presented by Isle of Wight SAS branch volunteer, Cordelia Dewey.
She said:
“1Leisure has done an amazing job continuing to educate and raise awareness to its customers about the importance of refusing single use plastic items at its sites and encouraging customers to get into the sustainable habit of reusing. The 1Leisure bottle amnesty did just this and it is great news that other plastic free initiatives have been put in place at all the leisure sites.”
The aim of the plastic free communities campaign is to encourage local schools and businesses to reduce their plastic intake and look for alternatives through reducing, reusing or recycling and not using non-plastic single use items.
For more information on the SAS Plastic Free Communities campaign, visit: https://www.sas.org.uk/plastic-free-communities/. You can visit 1Leisures website at http://1leisure.co.uk/.
