Plastics ban

I'm so impressed with the steps Australia is taking to reduce plastic usage. Very notably, there are no free plastic grocery bags. You have to bring your own bag or buy a reusable one. I cringe thinking about all the plastic bags we thoughtlessly use in the US, many of them barely full. And then sometimes they double bag them!

I LOVE my Woolworth's shopping bags. They hold a ton, stay open while you are trying to fill them, and they only cost 99¢AU, which is only 67¢ in US money. I have reusable bags at home but I paid a lot more for them and they don't stay open. You can bet I'll be bringing these back to Utah and proudly sporting them when I grocery shop. I think I also super love shopping at Woolies because of their adorable logo that looks like a pumpkin, my favorite vegetable here!

There are three bins for each household for disposing of waste. Green is for compostable yard waste. Yellow is for recyclables. And red is for things that really are at the end of the road and need to go to the landfill. Notice which bin is the smallest.

Western Australia has a plan to phase out plastics usage. The goals are to:

• prioritise avoiding single-use plastics
• replace single-use items with reusable alternatives wherever possible
• promote non-plastic single-use alternatives that can be recovered, recycled or composted if it is not possible to use reusable items
• minimise litter or contamination of waste treatment facilities by not using single-use plastic

They have already banned these single use plastic items in Stage 1 of their plan:

• plates
• unlidded bowls
• unlidded takeaway food containers
• unlidded cups for cold beverages
• cutlery
• drink stirrers
• drinking straws
• thick plastic shopping bags
• expanded polystyrene (EPS) takeaway food containers
• helium balloon releases

And as a result, the cups on our sacrament trays are paper cups. YES! Can you even handle the thought of all the plastic cups that get chucked in the landfill from the millions of church goers *every week*?! In Utah alone it's a terrible thought. I cringe. We've got to do better. Apparently my father-in-law used to wash metal sacrament cups every week when he was a teenager. Why can't we do that again? Yes, the use of disposable cups has afforded the teenagers more time after church instead of staying to wash them, but are we using that newfound time well? Is it worth the ecological cost? 

This plastics ban also means you cannot buy plastic forks, cups, or plates at the store. They have these wooden utensils. They are affordable, but will make you reconsider if you really need disposable items or could bring yourself to actually wash a fork. (We're all grownups here.)

On February 27, they began transitioning to Stage 2 of their plan, with the ban of these items taking full effect in September of 2023.  

• loose and moulded expanded polystyrene packaging
• degradable plastics (plastics designed to break up more rapidly into fragments under certain conditions).
• produce bags
• expanded polystyrene cups and food trays for raw meat and seafood
• coffee cups and lids
• lids for cups, bowls, trays, plates and takeaway food containers
• trays for takeaway food not covered in the Stage 1 ban
• cotton buds with plastic stems
• microbeads.

Part of their plan includes educating the public so everyone recognizes the need to be responsible. From what I've observed, people have a sincere desire to do their part and support the changes.  

https://www.wa.gov.au/system/files/2023-02/Single%E2%80%91use-plastics-ban-Stage-2-Frequently-asked-questions.pdf

#iLOVEitHere