A GRASSROOTS festival, which promotes sustainability, has lent its weight to an anti-litter and plastic pollution campaign which is being promoted across North Wiltshire.

The organisers behind Fieldview Festival, which kicks off in Little Somerford every August, have donated some of their proceeds to Refill Chippenham, a water bottle refilling scheme, with the aim of helping reduce the amount of single use plastic bottles being consumed and thrown away or littered every year.

The £1,500 grant, which is part of more than £30,000 the festival has donated in the last decade, will now be used to fund several awareness-raising campaigns in Chippenham in the next couple of months.

For these events, Refill Chippenham, will also be partnering with Chippenham-based charity Whale and Dolphin Conversation.

Rob Gillies from Off The Ground, which launched Refill Chippenham, said: “Millions of people recently watched the BBC’s Blue Planet II series, which highlighted the problem of plastic pollution in our oceans.

“If you don’t live by the sea its easy to think you can’t do anything to help, but by reducing our addiction to single-use plastic bottles here in Chippenham we can help reduce plastic pollution and plastic litter finding its way into the river and out to sea.

“That’s what Refill Chippenham and Off The Ground is about – local action.”

Elliot Greenman, who helps to organise Fieldview Festival, added: “At Fieldview part of our ethos is that everyone has a responsibility to reduce their impact on the

finite resources of the planet.

“The festival is run on sustainability principles, for example we power the festival with renewable energy and recycle everything we can.

“Supporting Refill Chippenham helps to spread the message that that everyone can have a positive impact with every decision they make.”

Helping tackle the issue of plastic waste in Chippenham and beyond is also the Hearty Hare, formerly known as Steamers, in Chippenham Railway Station.

The café, which is managed by Rachael Whittle and owned by Rachel Butler, hopes to be the first café in the town to go plastic-free by the end of March.

“We want to go completely plastic-free by then, because not only do we want to be the first café to achieve this in Chippenham, but we want to help tackle something which is very topical at the moment,” Mrs Whittle, who has overseen the rebrand, added.