War on Waste consultant Erin Rhoads believes that a national response to the plastic scourge is needed to have the biggest impact, but she also advocates that small, everyday changes can make a difference.
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Rhoads, a zero-waste blogger on her Rogue Ginger website, released her new book Waste Not on July 1, which aims to helps people reduce their waste and throw away less.
She offers practical tips and documents various ways in which people can create zero-waste or low-waste household.
This includes food shopping tips such as asking whether you really need the item or whether it can be made at home, for example making pasta sauce, mustard or mayonnaise to save on plastic or glass packaging, and how to make alternative beauty and household cleaning products.
Rhoads also offers her inspirations, such as a US chemist Paul Palmer who started the Zero Waste Institute “based on his belief that there should be a use for every by-product before production even begins”, and Beau Johnson who aimed to reduce the amount of waste ending in landfill with the five R philosophy of ‘refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle and rot’.
“Palmer’s ethos is asking big businesses and manufacturers to reduce their waste from the top,” Rhoads said.
“The waste that we produce is a result of bad design, but if we as consumers start to challenge [wasteful packaging] then we will see more businesses wanting to adopt practices that reduce waste.”
Rhoads said it was great that governments were beginning to realise that change was needed.
“Many businesses want to make changes but are nervous about losing money or losing customers so they really need that support and backing,” she said.
“It would be great to see governments offering financial incentives for people to come up with alternative solutions. There are people out there with great ideas, it just requires grants.”
She also encouraged people to tell businesses that they want to see change.
“It does not have to be an angry letter, it can say ‘I like your product but I don’t like your packaging’. The more we do this and keep asking for change, the more likely it is we will see a difference.”
Rhoads provided an example where a UK supermarket giant had accepted consumer desires to reduce waste, and are now allowing them to bring their own containers to delis.
“They saw that customers wanted that option to be able to reduce waste ... big businesses can empower customers to make better decisions.”
State’s potential to lead
Tasmania could help the world eradicate single-use plastics by creating a research centre focused on designing plastic alternatives, says the chairman of a national report on recycling and waste.
The Senate committee report, chaired by Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson, states that the Australian recycling industry is in crisis, and that all levels of government have failed to make appropriate waste and recycling policies.
It has called for a national ban on single-use plastics and made 17 other recommendations that could influence a national policy for change.
These included the development of a plastics co-operative research centre (CRC) for Australia.
Senator Whish-Wilson said he would like to see this research centre based in Tasmania.
He said any CRC would operate on a short-term basis and ideally be funded by both the Federal Government and key players in the recycling and waste industry. It would work on developing plastic alternatives, creating innovative markets for recycled products, and look for new ways to clear the oceans of plastic.
"We could bring in scientists and entrepreneurs from around the world to develop new alternatives for plastic ... there are good alternatives out there, for straws and coffee cups, but there are other products that we need to develop," he said.
"This is something that the industry has been calling for and if we can get innovators and have them based in Hobart or Launceston, we could lead the world in replacing single-use plastics."
Senator Whish-Wilson said it would be great if Australia could be the first country to legislate a plastic ban ahead of countries such as the UK, who aim to eliminate plastic by 2042.
"Other governments around the world are going to follow ... there is a race to the top to see which government can ban plastics first,” he said.
A key recommendation in the report looked at Australia prioritising a circular economy, where waste materials are used, collected, recovered and reused within Australia. Another was to develop a national container deposit scheme, and to create a clean waste stream.
“The reason the Chinese government decided to stop importing Australian waste was because a lot of our waste stream, collected from household kerbside recycling, was contaminated,” Senator Whish-Wilson said.
“Tasmania is one of the last states to declare a scheme which is a disgrace considering we are the clean, green and clever state. If Tasmania does not embark on implementing a state based scheme, then the federal government will at some stage.”
He said other notable points arising from the report included the need to create demand for recycled plastic, and the need for incentives to stop using plastic.
“Governments should have mandated levels of procurement from Australian industry recycled products … we would expect the state and local governments to start buying locally recycled and reprocessed materials, such as using second-hand recycled paper, or making roads from glass,” he said.
“We also need to break our addiction to plastic, especially from plastic packaging, and that would require the federal government to work with the state governments to phase out single-use plastics such as plastic straws, knives and forks, and plastic packaging.”
