Plastic bag free Coles Bay

Posted: 14.04.09  |  Created by:

As one of Tasmania’s most popular tourist destinations, Coles Bay, welcomes over 250,000 visitors a year. In early 2003, local baker Ben Kearney called Jon Dee, now Founder and Chairman of ‘Do Something!’ asking for advice on how he could reduce his shop’s usage of plastic shopping bags. Jon suggested that Ben should try to get his shop and all of the other Coles Bay retailers to ban plastic bags at the check-out. Ben, together with like-minded fellow residents, went to work.

Success story

Just after Anzac Day in 2003, Coles Bay became Australia’s first plastic bag free town. Since the ban was implemented, the town has avoided the use of over 1.8 million plastic bags. That’s 1.8 million less plastic bags ending up in our environment.

For the last 6 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. If they do forget their reusable bag, then an Australian-made paper bag is available to purchase as a convenient, ecologically sensitive solution.

Global example

Since Coles Bay banned plastic check-out bags, other towns and communities have used them as a role model and followed suit. Even Modbury, a town in England, used Coles Bay as their role model when they banned plastic checkout bags. Their success in doing so generated a massive amount of coverage in the UK media about banning plastic bags. This also provided the high-profile starting point for the UK's campaign against plastic bags.

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