RIDDLESDEN’S anti-plastic campaigners are championing their local greengrocer.

Plastic Free Riddlesden has hailed Val Holmes’s long-established shop in Hospital Road as the village’s biggest asset.

Group spokesman Jill Burghardt said the shop, which Val has run for 29 years, is always busy and is a hub of chatter and friendliness.

Jill said: “She sells an amazing range of fresh fruit and veg, and virtually everything is plastic-free.

“Waste is virtually non-existent as loose leaves and trimmings are collected with bruised and overripe fruit for the sheep and goats.

“Cardboard and the small amount of plastic is recycled and damaged wooden boxes go for kindling.

“Val has noticed positive changes with lots of shoppers taking their own containers and nearly all taking their own shopping bags too.”

Plastic Free Riddlesden is a community group supported by the national charity Surfers Against Sewage as part of their Plastic Free Communities programme.

Jill said such community groups were growing rapidly across the UK with the local area having them in Keighley, East Morton, Silsden and Bingley among others.

She added: We have the support of our local councillors, in Riddlesden’s case Councillors Malcolm Slater, Caroline Firth and Doreen Lee. Keighley Town Council are endorsing the local groups.”

“We want to celebrate the people in these communities and their passion.”

Keighley Town Council recently pledged support for local Plastic Free groups.

At a meeting earlier this month councillors pledged support for such groups in Oakworth and East Morton, which are striving to cut single-use plastics in their communities.

And it backed efforts to establish a Plastic Free group in Keighley.

At the same meeting the council declared a climate emergency, joining a growing number of authorities across the country to issue the declaration.

The move signals councils’ “severe concerns” over the current state of the planet’s climate and a determination to slash carbon emissions.