PADDY POWER: STOP GAMBLING WITH THE PLANET’S FUTURE!
This letter came from plastic waste campaigner Grace Hamilton. Plastic bookie’s pens might seem like a minor consideration but they do crop up all the time in our environment and it’s an easy step for bookmaker’s like Paddy Power, Boyle Sports and Ladbrokes to stop gambling with our planet’s future by switching to pencils from sustainably managed forests. Grace wrote the bulk of this letter so a huge thanks to her. She’s contacting all the major bookmakers, while I’ve decided to stick to the terms of my project by targeting Paddy Power.
ROI Paddy Power email address: retail_helpdesk_mailbox@paddypower.com
See Grace’s twitter for details on the other bookies she’s been contacting if you want to go further!
Dear Paddy Power,
I am writing to you as a bookmaker with shops in locations around Ireland which distribute small ‘disposable’ pens for customers’ use.
These pens are plastic and appear to be designed for use for a period of seconds to minutes before being discarded. Depending on the type of plastic, they will take many decades, perhaps centuries to break down. In those decades, an untold proportion are making their way into our drains, our hedgerows, our public spaces and eventually, our oceans and coasts. In Ireland, this amount is so significant that they are now a common item collected by those of us who volunteer our time to clean our countryside and coasts. The pens that we find and dispose of properly are the success stories. The ones that are the real problem are those that are in our oceans and are ingested by sealife either whole or in broken pieces.
This is not acceptable and I am calling on you to make an immediate change to your policy and stop supplying these pens.
You would be improving the odds of winning the war against the global problem of plastics waste by offering your customers pencils from sustainably managed forests. This would be a very positive and promotable move that your customers and wider society would happily back. And remember, an immediate change now still means that there will be bookies pen circulating and polluting for many decades to come.
I look forward to receiving a considered response and indication of action as soon as possible,
Yours
the plastic letters project 