A new Royal British Legion branch in Oldham has welcomed the charity’s plastic-free poppy, as it prepares for its first Remembrance Sunday.

On Wednesday, the Royal British Legion (RBL) announced that it was to ditch its plastic poppies, a design which it donned since the 1980s, for a paper poppy created from renewable sources including half from offcuts from the production of takeaway coffee cups.

The move has been praised by chair of the Failsworth RBL branch Paul Wadsworth, who reopened the branch earlier this year after more than four decades – at which point punters wore fabric poppies, designed in the 1960s.

The 45-year-old army veteran said: “I’m all for it, anything that’s perishable and doesn’t take long to deteriorate is a good thing – we need to protect the environment.

“We’re still selling the plastic ones because we’ve got them in stock but most of the poppies are now paper.

“Of course, it’s like anything you have to move forward and as a charity we have to do that ourselves and go with the times.”

He explained that for each weekend until Remembrance Sunday volunteers from the branch will be manning poppy stations at Tesco Extra, on Ashton Road West, and Morrisons, on Poplar Street.

Since the first poppy appeal in 1921 there have been more than 10 designs. The original was made with cotton, in the 1930s it switched to sateen, the 40s saw a cardboard design, in the 50s it dropped the leaf and was made from felt, while the 60s design also dropped the leaf – which was last sold by the Failsworth branch before it closed in 1978.

Mr Wadsworth and his team estimate that they have around 5,000 poppies in stock and have just finished dropping them off at pubs and shops across Failsworth.

He added: “We’ve got enough, we were swimming in them yesterday!”

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