New plastic bans have taken effect today in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia

ABC NEWS (Australia)

New plastic bans have taken effect today in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia. They prohibit items like plastic cotton buds but will function differently in each state.

Transcript

00:00 Under Australia's constitution, states and territories are responsible for waste and

00:07 recycling, which means they're also responsible for implementing their own plastic bans.

00:12 What we've now got in Australia, interestingly, is a bit of a race to the top with states

00:16 competing to see who's going to lead in terms of banning single-use plastics.

00:20 Queensland, WA and South Australia are leading the way.

00:24 From today, they've all banned plastic cotton buds.

00:27 Queensland's also banning loose-fill polystyrene packaging, plastic microbeads in cosmetic

00:33 and cleaning products, thick plastic shopping bags and the mass release of balloons.

00:38 In Western Australia, it's also the end of loose polystyrene packaging and microbeads,

00:44 as well as polystyrene cups and trays and degradable plastics.

00:48 And in South Australia, there'll be no more single-use plastic bowls and plates and pizza

00:54 box spaces.

00:55 What we really do need now is to that harmonisation of the bans on single-use plastics.

00:59 Certainly for industry, it's confusing and difficult to have different rules in every

01:02 state and territory, but also we really need to be working together as a nation.

01:06 There are calls for a national roadmap with timelines for phasing out environmentally

01:10 damaging plastics across all states, in the hope of a unified push against the environmental

01:17 hazard.

01:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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