Nantwich environmental campaigners have called for action after claiming the town’s Christmas lights switch-on was hijacked by “traders” selling poor quality plastic toys to kids.
Social media was flooded with complaints after Friday’s event with examples of “rip-off” prices for “poor” quality plastic products.
Traders set up in the town centre with mobile street stalls on Friday afternoon.
Sustainable Nantwich campaigner Jeremy Herbert said: “As soon as we saw these dodgy dealers setting up their stall of plastic rubbish on Friday afternoon we contacted the Town Council to find out what was going on.
“The Town Council team had not authorised them and were equally concerned about rogue traders hijacking their event, but it was too late to find out how to stop them.”
Sustainable Nantwich has been working with the Town Council to campaign against toxic plastic rubbish polluting our environment.
The council passed a resolution to support a Plastic Free Nantwich.
Mr Herbert added: “Local traders and the Nantwich Food Festival have joined us to try and cut down on the amount of plastic waste, using recyclable and non-plastic packaging.
“There are brilliant local producers and traders making beautiful high quality gifts from sustainable materials and they were there on the night.
“But they were swamped by the unofficial tide of plastic garbage.
“Ordinary plastic packaging is bad enough. When thrown away it breaks down into toxic micro plastics that are in the soil, the air and the water.
“It’s now in the food we eat, the water we drink and even in every mother’s milk.
“But these ‘cheap’ imported plastic toys are made of a host of mixed plastics, they fall apart in no time and are incredibly difficult if not impossible to recycle, leaving a toxic legacy for our community.
“This is a terrible Christmas gift for the town’s children.”
Sustainable Nantwich has written to local councillors and council officers asking them to work together to try to find a way of stopping this happening again.
“We understand this gang go from event to event across the country.
“Other towns like Ashbourne have planned ahead and managed to find a way of banning them before hand.
“We need to learn from them and protect our children from this kind of exploitation and a toxic future.”
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