Our Future is in the Bag
Our Future is in the Bag is the Waste Forum' s plastic bag exchange program. The aim of the project is to reduce plastic bag use by residents in REROC LGAs.
Via a television advertising campaign, council newsletters and media releases residents in the REROC region were invited to bring 20 plastic bags into a REROC member council and exchange them for a non-woven, reusable bag. The project was enormously successful in its first when 400,000 plastic bags were collected for recycling. The project ran again in 2008 and has continued on a much smaller scale in 2009.
Bagged!
The Bagged! project was targeted at businesses with the aim of encouraging them to offer customers alternatives to plastic bags.
The Waste Forum found that one of the hurdles to the use of biodegradable bags was the unit cost. We set up a buying group for small retailers which lowered the unit cost of the bags from 11 cents to 2.9 cents per bag. Retailers could also purchase paper bags and reusable non-woven bags as part of the project. 32 business participated and to date they have purchased over 43,000 biodegradable bags and 910 re-usable paper bags 1,100 calico or non-woven bags.
The Future is in the Bag and Bagged! won the inaugural Keep Australia Beautiful (NSW) Plastic Bag Reduction Initiative Award.
