What's the best material for a banner announcing that your town is plastics-free?
I suspect you know where I'm going with this.
Chepstow, a town in Wales, is so proud of its designation as a plastics-free community that it commemorated the achievement with a large plastic banner over its historic archway.
The choice of materials is raising some eyebrows. But volunteers behind the decision say plastic is the better material for this application.
The Twitter handle Plastics-Free Chepstow (@PFChepstow) replied to a question about the banner's material saying: "Great question! This is a hard-wearing plastic banner which will be re-used at future events. We aren't opposed to all #plastics; instead, we focus on #reducing #SingleUsePlastic consumption in our town. See @sascampaigns for more info."
BBC News quotes Tim Mellville, a plastics-free Chepstow volunteer, saying that plastics have a valuable role to play in society, and that the "plastic-free" designation refers only to single-use plastics.
"The sign will be used for many years to come. Cotton was considered but it would have degraded and torn because of the length of it," Mellville said in the BBC report. "We are never going to have a town that is completely plastic-free."
According to the United Kingdom-based organization Surfers Against Sewage, 301 communities have been designated "plastics-free."