We at Kingston Environment Centre are providing a hub for various environmental activities attracting a wide range of people from local communities. We are well located with a prominent place on the Fountain Roundabout, New Malden. We are looking to transform several spaces - our back yard, our public-facing front yard and municipal flower beds outside our premises and our indoor plants as well. Currently our space is a jumble of mismatched hand-me-downs, mostly in plastic pots. Plastic waste is recognised as a problem we all must tackle. Our aim for this project is to raise this issue in a variety of ways. For example We can demonstrate the production of compost in the garden and reduce the need for purchasing soil and compost in plastic bags. We can demonstrate that pots for seedlings can be made out of newspaper. We can speak to local stores about initiating plastic free aisles in their gardening departments.

What we'll deliver:

• Create a plastic free back yard, front yard and surroundings
• A museum of plastic - examples of things we should be phasing out
• Employ a volunteer coordinator to upskill new volunteers in plastic-free gardening
• Garden open days to encourage behaviour change
• Volunteers reaching out to community
• Recruit a family to blog about their plastic-free gardening year
• Campaign for plastic free aisles in garden centres and stores
• Information leaflets about buying, recycling and re-using your garden products

Why it's a great idea:

Awareness is growing about reducing plastic in the home but does not extend to peoples thinking about the garden. And plastic getting into the soil is a particular problem that has not been highlighted. Once plastic is in the soil it can end up in our food, our rivers and oceans. With this project we want to be at the forefront of a campaign that will raise awareness of plastic in the garden and help to get rid of plastic in the garden. Ultimately we would like to have plastic free gardens and this project is one step towards this. We realise this is quite a journey for manufacturers, retailers and the public. In the interim there are other steps in this process such as only having plastics that are resistant to being broken down by sunlight. Through our current survey we discovered that people are not aware of how or where to dispose of their plastic garden waste and we want to create leaflets to share this kind of information.

Steps to get it done:

• Purchasing Pots, and garden equipment
• Replanting, potting