Think Local. Shop Local.
Help us keep our community unique
Thames Ditton High Street is the heart of our village and Think Local. Shop Local is an initiative designed to help keep our shops and businesses healthy and thriving. Spread the message with us and think local and shop local whenever you can.
Here are five good reasons to buy local:
1. You can walk to the shops, avoiding the traffic queues, those carbon miles, petrol costs and expensive parking. Ashley Road Car Park is just minutes from the shops and very reasonably priced – only 10p for up to 30 minutes. Even better, with the new pathway opening alongside Simply Fresh, the shops will be just seconds away!
2. Get more variety. The majority of our local shops are Independents which offer a fantastic range of goods and services unavailable in the larger centres.
3. Enjoy service with a smile All the people who work in our shops, pubs and restaurants know their customers, often on a first name basis and go the extra distance in ensuring a really pleasurable shopping experience.
4. Support the local economy The cycle of creating and spending money locally strengthens our local economy as money recirculates back into the community encouraging local prosperity. It also creates much needed employment.
5. Experience a better quality of life Thames Ditton High Street is the focal point of our village – where people meet up, spend time together, to relax as well as to shop or eat and drink. It’s also just a five minute walk from the train station, in zone 6, and 30 minutes from Waterloo.
Think Local. Shop Local. Keep the Heart in Thames Ditton High Street. Look out for the stickers in the shops.
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THAMES DITTON BORROW & REUSE BOOMERANG BAGS
the sew sustainable alternative to plastic bags
Thames Ditton High Street was the FIRST in the UK to introduce an
exciting new initiative designed to make plastic bags a thing of the past. Boomerang Bags is a community driven movement tackling plastic pollution at the grassroots level. It is HUGE in Australia – Boomerang Bags are made by volunteers in the community into shopping bags of varying sizes out of second-hand recyclable materials – cottons, linens etc - which are given to the public, FREE, for them to use instead of plastic bags.
The initiative launched simultaneously in Thames Ditton High Street and the Thames Ditton Farmers’ Market in June 2017. This followed months of hard work by the Thames Ditton Crafters under the leadership of Jenny Avon who had been busy sewing bags for a selection of shops in Thames Ditton High Street to give away free to customers to use as their every day shopping bag.
Driving the initiative forward, Jenny teamed up with Tricia W. Bland, organizer of the Thames Ditton High Street Retailers’ Association to sign up the independent shops in Thames Ditton High Street while galvanizing support from other community groups including schools, churches, Brownies & Guides and the local WI. Participating shops and businesses are identified by a window poster advising that the shop supports the Thames Ditton Boomerang Bags scheme.
Says Tricia: ‘The response from shops in Thames Ditton High Street has been incredibly positive. We now have 12 outlets signed up to stock the bags including Budgens, Thames Food & Wine, Paull's fruit & veg, Thames Ditton Bakery, Secret Garden florist, View Gifts, Nice Buns café, La Fontana deli & café, CycleLink, 30 Antiques, Dennys Books and The Ironing Board, which is also the collection point for residents to donate their unwanted fabrics.
‘The beauty of the Thames Ditton Boomerang Borrow & Reuse initiative is that there is absolutely NO COST to the stockist – i.e. shop, business or café. We just need those who agree to support the scheme to hand out a free Boomerang Bag to customers who forget to bring a reusable shopping bag plus put a small poster in their shop window flagging up their support. When the stockist runs out of the Boomerang Bags these are then replaced, lovingly hand made by the Thames Ditton Crafters volunteer team and other community groups.
If anyone would like to join the Boomerang community in Thames Ditton then please email tricia@the-blands.co.uk.