It is usually cakes that are used to describe great sales but in the case of the "Xabia ecologica" jute bag campaign the number of bags already sold speak for themselves. Since the bags arrived in the town at the end of June 1500 have been distributed and a second order is already on its way.

Twenty small businesses are already collaborating with the distribution of the bags in the old town, in the port and in the Arenal, and the business Associations in the old town and the Port are taking part as well, buying bags in bulk to distribute to their members. In the old town these bags will be printed on the reverse with the logo of the old town business Association.

PUXS - Towards a sustainable Xàbia, the not for profit association responsible for launching the bag campaign, hopes the success of these attractive hard wearing bags can help to change the attitudes of a "throw away society", where hundreds of thousands of single use plastic bags are given away free everyday, and around the world more than 1 trillion plastic bags a year are consumed.  The aim of the campaign is to decrease and then eliminate the use of plastic bags in the town. The organisers would like to see Xàbia become the first town in Spain to be plastic bag free.

A spokesperson for PUXS says: The large bags have proved so popular that we have already ordered another 500. They have been seen in the shops and on the beach, as they are just the right size for swimming costumes and towels. The small ones (which hold much more than first appears, as they open out) are popular with pensioners, as two bags balance nicely and they are easy to lift. Bike riders find they fit nicely into their bike baskets and the shoulder bags are especially useful for carrying papers from office to office for meetings.

Plastic bag use is a major source of pollution and contributes directly to the deaths of millions of animals worldwide, particularly marine life; it is estimated that most of them end their short life in a landfill site, where they take hundreds of years to degrade.

Spain is Europe's biggest producer of single-use plastic bags, and the EU's third main consumer. There are 10 billion bags used a year in Spain producing 100,000 tons of non-biodegradable toxic garbage. While the average person uses 238 a year, only 10 per cent of them are recycled.

More information about the campaign and the participating business can be found on the web site www.xabia21grupos.org