Cotton bud success!

After thousands of us got behind City to Sea’s petition, all the major retailers – Boots, Morrisons, Superdrug, Lidl, Tesco, Asda and Wilkinsons – agreed to ditch the plastic and switch to paper cotton buds.

Cotton buds pollute our beaches and riverbanks. They start off in our bathroom cabinets, we use them once, then many people flush them down the toilet – which means millions of them end up in our seas and rivers. And because the sticks are made of plastic, they won’t ever biodegrade – they just end up killing fish and other animals.

So Nat from City to Sea set up a petition on the 38 Degrees website – and a whopping 156, 678 of us signed it! But we didn’t stop there. Together, we flooded each shop’s Facebook wall with comments urging them to switch the stick – and they fell like dominoes!

This is people-power in action. Millions of plastic cotton bud sticks in the ocean are a huge problem. But together, we convinced some of the biggest shops on our high streets that there was a really simple solution.

Here’s what Nat had to say:

Congratulations to Nat and everyone who got on board – we did it!

If you have any ideas of how we can stop plastic polluting the environment, or how to make the world a better, fairer place, why not set up a petition today? It doesn’t take long and we’ll help you every step of the way: http://link.38degrees.org.uk/start