Plastic supermarket bags are an environmental disaster. There are 17 billion of them in the UK alone, clogging ditches and wrapping around branches, leading to the nickname "urban tumbleweed". As yet, no legislation exists to limit their production, and supermarkets have continually failed to live up to their promises to tackle the problem once and for all.

So on May 1st, 2007, the local council of Modbury in Dorset, England decided they had waited long enough, and took matters into their own hands - creating Europe's first plastic shopping bag-free community. The campaign was started by Rebecca Hosking, a resident who works as a documentary filmmaker. While in Hawaii filming a wildlife program for BBC2, she was profoundly affected by the plight of a turtle who choked to death on a plastic bag, and returned home determined to make a difference. 

She's certainly done that. Now the town's shopkeepers only offer biodegradable cornstarch bags, for five pence each – or a tailor-made Modbury canvas tote bag. And that's not all: The local delicatessen uses cornstarch cartons and brown paper bags, and has stopped using plastic sandwich packing. The grocery shop sells fruit and vegetables loose, without plastic bags or "shrink-wrap". In December, the town butcher even used cornstarch bags to package shoppers' Christmas turkeys.

Now, other UK towns, including Selkirk, Scotland, are following in Modbury's footsteps by banning plastic bags – and across the pond, San Francisco's ban on plastic bags at grocery stores went into effect last November.

Hoskins believes there is hope for other towns around the world to take similar steps: "Modbury is just a traditional farming town, it is not green at all," she told The Independent. "Everyone has been saying that nothing has happened here since Cromwell's time, so if we can do it anyone can."