Bags of a different kind were also in the news as the British Government pondered about what to do with the public's addiction to the plastic bag, the kind we see hanging from the telephone wires, or blocking the gratings or cluttering the kerbs. For rather than help to enable people to live, the plastic bag is now associated with the deaths of both human beings and animals alike.

Apparently the UK only used 9.9 billion plastic bags last year, a reduction of some three billion from 2007. The cost to the taxpayer, in this throw away society, is as mind boggling as the trillions of plastic bags now being manufactured to feed the addiction of a product that has been described as the scourge of the modern world.

Ask any of the Council street cleaners what are the main items of rubbish they brush and lift from our streets every day and I'll bet that plastic bags are among the top six. It's costing us both financially and socially for who wants to live in a place bedecked with plastic bags particularly of the blue variety.

The image of our City has undergone a transformation in the past years. There is a lot going for the City of Colmcille, despite the years of British Government neglect and discrimination. The increased numbers of visitors remind us that Derry is a city of tremendous natural beauty which we citizens sometimes fail to appreciate.

Plastic bags are an expensive nuisance we can do without. Their use is costing us in the expense of clearing blocked drains and sewers, as well as filling up landfill sites, for plastic bags is not bio degradable and will still be around hundreds of years after we have left this planet. That should be enough to persuade us to make Derry the first free plastic bag City in the whole of the island. You think it cannot be done well who would have imagined say fifty years ago that our public places would be smoke free or those motorists would be using lead free petrol or that Unionist and Nationalists would be talking of a shared space. There is another more pressing reason for this City to begin a campaign to eliminate the plastic bag.

Evidence gathered over the years by scientist and environmentalists point to the effect of the plastic toxic stew, arising from the mix of chemicals involved in the manufacture of plastic bags, on both human beings and the marine and animal life on the planet.

The shore lines of many countries throughout the world are littered with the remains of thousands of marine mammals, fish and birds who die each year as a result of mistakenly eating the plastic junk or being ensnared by it.

If the thought of drowning dolphins choking on plastic bags is not enough to raise our awareness of the environmental danger involved perhaps we should heed the warning by scientist that there is evidence that the chemical toxicity has now entered the human food chain and is linked to a host of health problems including obesity, impotence and cancer.

So is a plastic bag free Derry possible? When Martina Anderson stood on the steps of the Guildhall and asked people to 'Stand up for Derry' she was envisioning a Derry of political, economic, social and environmental change.

A Derry that would take its rightful place as the capitol of the North West and the fourth largest City in Ireland. She knew that such a vision would require more than political or civic leadership. It would require the leadership of citizens united in a common purpose.

That common purpose emerged when she brought the issue of the location of Project Kelvin to the attention of the Derry people, ironically through the communication power of the Paul McFadden show on Radio Foyle.

It touched a raw nerve slumbering in the heads of the people since the days of the University cavalcade, and unleashed a torrent of anger and outrage from the citizens of a City, short changed for too long but now united in a common purpose.

Project Kelvin became the catalyst for people, politicians and business interests ,from all sections of the Derry community to mount a challenge to a decision that had sectarian politics stamped all over it.

The Minister Arlene Foster brought up in the DUP school of not' a Fenian foot about the place,' wondered if she was 'minded' for the second time, to be hoisted on her own petard. And she was. Change was in the air.

Derry City Council must have wondered the same this week when in an effort to reach a rate that would not leave the City bankrupt, they made a decision to close two of its recycling centres, at Brandywell and Eglinton.

As callers to Radio Foyle made clear, both centres are an essential service in a City that continues to suffer a serious dumping and fly tipping problem. The Council moved retrospectively to assure the public that the newly refurbished state of the art and larger recycling facility at Pennyburn would adequately the needs, though this raised concerns among residents of that area at the prospect of increased traffic volume.

The anger of the public was not just about the closures and the job losses but the arbitrarily manner in which the decision was made and announced.

No advance notice, no consultation, no environmental impact assessment. A done deal for the best of reasons that cannot be reversed due to the legal situation once the rate has been struck.

We all accept that Council has an annual obligation to keep rates down to a minimum but at the end of the day it is the British Government who has overall fiscal control of the financial affairs of the North. They have the overall responsibility for waste not just of money but of the stuff including plastic bags that is fast becoming a burden for all ratepayers.

It is almost seven years since Mitchell Mc Laughlin raised the question within the Assembly and with the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, of a ban on plastic bags. He pointed out the savings that would accrue if the British followed the action of the Dublin Government who that year had imposed a 22 cent euro levy, on all plastic bags.

The considerable revenue earned by the tax was used to ring fence environmental schemes with considerable savings to taxpayers. More significantly the levy reduced the use of plastic bags by an amazing 94% proving that they can be done without.

The reluctance of the British Government to introduce either a similar levy or a complete ban despite a major effort by leading supermarkets to persuade us to switch to cloth or paper bags or at least to start reusing the plastic raises suspicions of cosy relationships between the petro chemical industry and Governments. Someone has to take the lead and challenge the British Government to introduce the necessary legislation.

Derry City Council has been unable to quantify the expense of the use of plastic bags to the ratepayer of the City. That could be a job in hand before next years rates are struck. But the Council can with the citizens lead the way. In calling for a ban or a levy.

Can you imagine a year or so from now the sign on Free Derry wall would proclaim to the world, You are now entering plastic bag Free Derry