Boomerang Bags

Boomerang Bags is a not-for-profit, community initiative aimed at reducing the use of plastic bags by engaging local communities in the development of a free, sustainable alternative.

The initiative involves the installation of bag-share, or Boomerang Bag Boxes throughout a target business district. Each box is stocked with re-useable Boomerang Bags for customers to borrow if they have forgotten their own and return on subsequent visits. The availability of free, re-useable bags reduces the need for single-use plastic bags, and the encouragement to ‘Borrow and Bring Back’ works to foster the sustainable mentality of re-use, thereby reducing plastic bag consumption in the long term.

Each Boomerang Bag is hand-made by volunteers from the local community using donated second-hand materials, keeping the initiative local and sustainable.

For more information on how the Boomerang Bags initiative works or how to get Boomerang Bags started in your local community, click here.

By implementing Boomerang Bags in your neighborhood, you are participating in a national movement that celebrates a local grass roots initiative, community building, and sustainability.

Ghost Net Shopping Bags

Two major issues, plastic in the environment and people choosing to use single-use plastic shopping bags, are addressed with this innovative source reduction plan. Ghost nets are a prolific concern in the Far North of Queensland. Why not replace your single-use plastic shopping bags with a bag made out of ghost nets? Although this solution does not address the source of the ghost nets it reduces the amount of single-use plastic shopping bags being used which have the potential to be released to the environment. It also recycles the plastic ghost net materials, diverting them from landfill. Ghost net bags are available from the Tangaroa Blue Foundation Sea Store in custom sizes; all proceeds go to funding more beach clean-ups in Cape York!

Keeping Paradise Plastic Free

In the beautiful tropical region of Far North QLD, a working group has recently formed with the aim to reduce the use of disposable plastics within the Douglas Shire. Being surrounded by 2 world heritage areas, the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, community members felt there needed to be a greater push in the local area to minimise human impacts on our unique and valuable natural ecosystems.

Representatives from local community groups, the Douglas Shire Sustainability Group and Tangaroa Blue Foundation, partnered with the local branch of Bendigo Bank and the Douglas Shire Council, to start a campaign to reduce the use of disposable plastic bags within the Douglas Shire.

Read more “Keeping Paradise Plastic Free”

Making a difference is in the bag

In 2015, Eurobodalla Shire Council and Broulee Public school worked together to trial a program aimed to help the school community reduce their dependence on single use plastics.

The program focused on single use vegetable shopping bags. Volunteers from the school’s P&C made shopping bags out of alternate materials and distributed them to students for them and their parents to use instead of plastic bags they might find at supermarkets

The program engages the whole school community, promotes environmental sustainability and provides the P&C with a small income.

Read more “Making a difference is in the bag”

Not so flushable dog poo bags

On a recent beach and dune clean up of an area near Mudjimba Beach, Coolum & North Shore Coast Care volunteers found more than 100 bags of dog poo that had been thrown into the dunes. Some of the bags were degradeable bags and some were biodegradeable bags. When revegetating the dunes, our volunteers regularly find bags of dog poo so it’s unfortunately a common problem.

The use of degradeable bags means that when the bag breaks into pieces, the plastic pieces don’t go away – they just get smaller and smaller and the pieces remain in the environment. This contrasts with biodegradeable bags where the bag breaks down and returns to natural components.

are a number of ways to work on the correct disposal of dog poo bags, including bin placement, public education etc. These are important, but so is the type of dog poo bags used and this became our initial focus.

So that degradeable bags are not left in the dunes to add additional plastic into the environment, we looked into finding biodegradeable bags. Ideally dog poo bags should always go in the bin, but if they are left in the dunes a biodegradeable bag is a better (but of course not altogether ideal) option. We have two councils in our area – one council currently provides biodegradeable dog poo bags and the other currently provides degradeable dog poo bags. We were hoping to encourage both councils to only provide biodegradeable dog poo bags and wanted to see what options were available.

Read more “Not so flushable dog poo bags”