Australian states with bans in place see rise in consumers and retailers resorting to thicker bags to escape the rule

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Shoppers in states that have banned single-use shopping bags are reportedly buying reusable plastic bags then throwing them away.

The Australian Capital Territory requested an investigation into the use of thicker plastic bags last month, after reports that retailers and consumers had simply switched their plastic bag consumption to thicker bags to escape the ban.

Tasmania asked its Environmental Protection Authority to conduct a similar inquiry in July, after noticing an increase in the volume of thicker plastic bags sold in Tasmania since single-use bags were banned in 2013.

Both states have banned shops from giving away plastic bags that are less than 35-microns thick, the classic supermarket shopping bag.

Woolworths and Coles to phase out single-use plastic bags Read more

The ACT introduced its ban in 2011, and a 2014 review found it led to a 36% reduction in the volume of plastic bags of all types in landfill.

But it also noted that a rise in sales to retailers of “heavier weight boutique plastic bags, as a substitution for the lightweight bags, would be an adverse unintentional outcome of the ban”.

At that time, the report said, the use of heavier plastic bags had not increased to the point that it fully offset the benefit of banning single-use bans.

The ACT climate change and sustainability minister, Shane Rattenbury, requested a new a review because he was “worried about the extent to which retailers are using slightly thicker plastic bags, which is currently permitted”.

In a letter to the environmental commissioner, Kate Auty, he said plastic bag manufactures had been quick to provide bags that were just over 35 microns.

“As a consequence I understand that many retailers and customers may not have changed their behavior around the use of plastic bags, and perversely may instead be using thicker plastic bags for single uses,” Rattenbury wrote.

He said he was considering expanding the ban to include thicker bags.

Then the Tasmanian environment minister, Matthew Groom, commissioned a similar review from the EPA in July, telling the Mercury: “It would appear that there has been an increase in the volume of a thicker type of single-use bag that, while technically compliant, are inconsistent with the original intent. We want to fix this.”



That review was due at the end of 2017 but has not been published.

South Australia was the first Australian jurisdiction to introduce a plastic bag ban in 2009, followed by the Northern Territory and ACT in 2011 and Tasmania in 2013.

Plastic bag bans in Queensland and Western Australia will take effect from 1 July 2018. Victoria announced in October that it would also ban plastic bags, but is still undertaking consultation.

Queensland bans single-use plastic bags from July 2018 Read more

The only state not to commit to a ban is New South Wales.

Success has been mixed. Conservation group Keep Australia Beautiful last year declared the NT ban a failure after its surveys showed that plastic bag pollution had increased for five consecutive years.

A 2012 South Australian review found that while the number of single-use plastic bags in the litter stream decreased by 45%, the proportion of households buying plastic bin liners increased from 15% to 80%.

“As one of the overarching aims of the ban was to cause consumers to behave in a greener way, future initiatives should examine how also to change bin-lining behaviour,” it said.

Deakin University waste expert Trevor Thornton said unless it was accompanied by a strong public education campaign, plastic bag bans would not succeed in reducing plastic waste overall.

Thornton said the purpose of the ban was to encourage people to change their behaviour to use fewer bags, not just replace free supermarket bags with thicker garbage bags, department store bags or the reusable plastic bags sold at supermarkets.

“Plastic shopping bags are a very, very tiny proportion of the plastics going into landfill,” he told Guardian Australia. “Banning plastic bags is not necessarily always the best environmental outcome.”