Are You Ready for a Plastic-Free Life? Plastic Bags Will Be Cancelled This July (Except in NSW & VIC)

Cya later, plastic bag.

From 1 July, Western Australia and Queensland will join ACT, South Australia, NT and Tasmania by banning the use of lightweight plastic bags.

Queensland announced last year that they would be banning single-use plastic bags after QLD's Environment Minister, Steven Miles, admitted that children had been writing letters to him explaining the effect on the environment.

"I get letters every day from school kids around the state," Miles said.

"An estimated 2.4 billion beverage containers and 1 billion lightweight plastic shopping bags are used in Queensland every year… these are ending up in our waterways and killing and maiming our native animals."

Shortly after, Western Australia's Premier, Mark McGowan, announced that his state would also ditch the translucent animal killers.

McGowan told The Project he "had the view we should get rid of more plastics and clearly young people support it."

While Victoria also announced last October that they plan to phase out plastic bags, there is still no word on what date exactly that will happen.

So, that leaves just NSW as the only state or territory without any formalised plans to ban the bag.

Despite the fact that there is no (public) intention by the NSW government to ban plastic bags, Woolworths and Coles are both moving toward banning them nationwide. Woolworths announced last year that they would introduce more durable and reusable plastic as well as hessian bags. Woolworths estimates that 3.2 billion plastic bags are handed to shoppers every year and one per cent of them, or, 30 to 40 million, end up in the environment.

What can you do in the meantime?

Well, for starters, you can impose a self-ban on plastic bag use. Remind your parents (or yourself) to take their green enviro bags when they go grocery shopping.

Other harmful plastics that we use on a pretty regular occasion include plastic straws and coffee cups. You can do your part by purchasing a reusable coffee cup (or just get a mug from home!) and forgoing a straw (or BYO).