Plastic bag ban
In the Australian states of Queensland and Western Australia as well as Victoria and New South Wales it was quite normal to see shoppers leaving big supermarkets with trolleys full of single-use, lightweight plastic bags. Often more than several dozens. These plastic bags normally ended up in landfill or could be found anywhere in the Australian nature, blown there by the wind or just thrown out by people.
From July 1, Queensland and Western Australia banned single-use, lightweight plastic bags from major retailers. They are following the Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and Tasmania. Victoria will follow. Only New South Wales won’t have a ban.
The two big supermarket chains, Woolworth’s and Coles, jumped onto the bandwagon and announced plans to phase out single-use plastic bags just a few weeks before the legislation of Queensland and Western Australia comes into effect. But its decision will also affect stores in New South Wales, and Victoria.
Although it seems that the two big supermarket chains wouldn’t have gone this if the majority of the states wouldn’t have had introduced the respective legislation, this move should be more than welcomed. Woolworths alone gave out 3.2 billion lightweight plastic bags per year. Furthermore, the ban on plastic bags only relates to single-use lightweight plastics thinner than 0.035 millimetres!
But not everyone embraced the plastic bag ban:
“In a shock announcement on Friday afternoon, Woolworths revealed it would shortly begin phasing out the bags in supermarkets”
“Coles axed single-use plastic shopping bags from its stores”
“Overloaded reusable bags causing shoppers injuries, leaving physios to shoulder the burden.”
“Pointless ban. Many face now the prospect of paying for bin liners for the first time ever.”
“Shop assistant ‘grabbed by throat’ as Australia ban starts”
“One can’t carry plastic bags everywhere one goes”
The average Australian uses 170 plastic bags every year. 150 million of these end up as litter, only 3% of them are currently being recycled and 200,000 bags are dumped in landfill every hour.
Therefore, it is indeed a shock for Australians, that they won’t be able to get their groceries packed for free into single use plastic bags any longer. As a result you find lots of articles in the media and official papers how to deal with the plastic bag ban – oh what a problem.
I personally don’t understand what is all the fuss about and wonder how shoppers at ALDI survived all the years without these free plastic bags. Maybe they all had shoppers injuries, cause by reusable bags. The outcry seems to be from people who love to hate change.
In Germany, it has been totally normal for decades to bring your own reusable shopping bag or, if you don’t mind spending money, pay for a thicker also reusable plastic bag. In addition, here in Australia I always have a small reusable plastic bag with me (which hardly takes up any space) and a foldable shopping basket together with cotton shopping bags in the boot of my car. I can’t even remember the last time I received a plastic bag for my groceries in supermarket.
And it works, also in Australia. A review of the ACT’s plastic bag ban in 2014 found annual plastic bag waste had dropped from 266 tonnes to 171 tonnes after it was implemented.