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How Coles Bay Became Plastic Bag Free

As one of Tasmania’s most popular tourist destinations, Coles Bay has over 100,000 visitors a year. Back in 2002, Ben Kearney the town’s baker, called Jon Dee asking for advice on how he could reduce his shop’s usage of plastic bags. Jon suggested that Ben should try and get his shop and all of the other Coles Bay retailers to ban plastic bags at the check-out.

As a result, just after Anzac Day in 2003, Coles Bay became Australia’s first plastic bag free town. The response from the public and media both here and overseas was incredibly positive. The outlets who banned the bags included two supermarkets, one of which was an IAG outlet.

Since the ban was implemented, this small Tasmanian town has stopped the use of over 1.75 million plastic bags. That’s 1.75 million less plastic bags ending up in our landfills and environment. In one simple move, they showed that Australian communities could easily make the switch to living without plastic check-out bags. The retailers also benefited because they no longer had to buy plastic bags.

As alternatives to plastic check-out bags, the town’s retailers offered a strong Australian-made paper bag, as well as a reusable bag.

For the last 5 years, the people of Coles Bay and all of their visitors have got into the habit of bringing their own bag every time they shop. Knowing that free plastic bags are not available has made the habit a lot easier to get into. If they do forget their bag, then the cheaper paper bag is available.

Since Coles Bay banned plastic check-out bags, other towns and communities have used them as a role model and followed suit. Even Modbury, which is based in England, used Coles Bay as their role model when they banned plastic check-out bags. Jon and Ben advised Modbury’s Rebecca Hosking on how she could get her town to go plastic bag free. Their success in doing so generated a massive amount of coverage in the UK media about banning plastic bags.

As a result, many UK towns and communities are now following Modbury’s example. Better still, the whole of South Australia will now be doing a Coles Bay. What’s wonderful is how it all started with one phone call and a small Tasmanian town that wanted to make a difference.