Woolworths, Coles, and the and Western Australian governments are all phasing out lightweight shopping bags, potentially preventing billions of bags from finding their way into landfill or oceans. What are the alternatives, and how effective will the policy be? The bans On 20 June, will ban all single-use plastic bags from stores nationwide, including the department store Big W and the liquor store BWS. Competitor Coles will follow suit on 30 June. It is estimated that each chain gives out 3. Read more At the same time,. South Australia, the Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania have already banned lightweight plastic bags. On Monday, Woolworths also announced it will be phasing out the sale of plastic straws. By 1 November, no stores will stock them. What are the alternatives? Because the 15c bags are thicker than the old bags, environment groups warn they could cause more damage if customers start buying them but still throw them out. When ordering online, customers will be given the choice of the thick plastic bags, or crates to be unpacked at home. Some independent grocers, such as Harris Farm Markets, have already phased out plastic bags. Harris Farm provides customers with either a cardboard box or crate, or with a paper bag. What else needs to be done? Jayne Paramor, the deputy director of the environmental group Boomerang Alliance, said the ban was in many ways inevitable. According to Boomerang Alliance, the next step is to cut down on plastic packaging on food itself, and making sure consumers remember to reuse the new bags. Tasmania and the ACT have commissioned reviews of bag use, after. Paramor says the UK has observed the same phenomenon. There has also been no ban yet on produce bags — used to gather loose fruit and vegetables — but Coles has announced its produce bags will soon be made of 30% recycled content. They have also committed to cutting down the plastic packaging for fruits like bananas, and Woolworths is trialling the removal of packaging from 80 lines of produce. Both chains will also provide special bins for customers to throw out the new reusable bags if needed, through a program called REDcycle, which turns the bags into plastic products like outdoor furniture. The REDcycle bins will be rolled out to every Woolworths and Coles store by July. For those who reuse their plastic bags as bin liners, there are other alternatives. Paramor recommends people use paper or newspaper to line their bins, or to simply use the plastic bins and rinse them out afterwards. A found that after the bag ban, the percentage of households buying bin liners increased. But Paramor said even this was better for the environment. And bin bags are also built for purpose — they are put into the waste stream and do actually go to the right place, which is landfill. Shopping bags disappear out into the environment.
