How you can donate carrier bags to help food bank and support Earth Day 2021

The mall has teamed up with the Washington Community Food Project (WCFP). They are accepting bag donations at the recycling point in Wessington Square, which is in the Galleries.

The global pandemic has led to more people using food banks, meaning that the number of bags used to hand over food parcels has increased too.

To support Earth Day, a worldwide environmental initiative, the WCFP has launched an Earth Day Bag Appeal to encourage donations of used, clean shopping bags to be re-used to distribute food parcels.

This is aimed at helping the food bank reach more local people in need. It also prevents more bags from having to be landfilled.

Washington Community Food Project is a volunteer-run food bank covering the whole of Washington. The charity relies on donations from local people and businesses and supports over 70 people every week.

The WCFP opened its doors in the Galleries in December 2019 after years operating from various temporary locations. The Galleries’ owners, M & G Real Estate, prepared a unit for them to work from.

Clive Bowman, chair of WCFP, said: “We are currently using over 100 bags a week with the donations that we are giving out and quite often we need to buy bags to ensure we have enough to be able to hand out our food parcels.

“Being in the Galleries has raised the profile of the charity enormously.

"Using bags is not only practical, it also means that our clients can pick up their parcels discreetly and to anyone else it looks like they’ve just been shopping.

“Donating unused bags will help us enormously and free up funds to enable us to buy essential supplies.”

David McNee, centre manager at the Galleries, said: “We have all got plastic bags and bags for life in our cupboards or car boots.

“We hope that this initiative, which aims to increase awareness of Earth Day, the environment and recycling, will allow the charity to use their funds to buy vital supplies for the benefit of local people.”

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