According to WWF Australia, on average, Australians use 130 kg of plastic per person each year. And only 9% of this usage goes into recycling. That means up to 130,000 tonnes of plastic would find its way into a our foodchain, landfill or the ocean.
One man has started to change this and expects that others would follow in saving our environment.
His name is Ravi who runs a small seaside cafe called Chain of Fools in Mentone, Victoria.
Ravi says, “In 2017, over a Christmas dinner spent in the Gippsland bush, I was dismayed by the number of plastic bags we had packed. Chatting with Paul Rowlands and friends by the campfire I decided to stop using single use plastic bags at home and at the cafe.”
Ravi noticed that surprisingly on an average he was using “5 or 6 plastic bags a day for my supermarket shopping.”
“We organised a batch of light muslin cloth produce bags as a substitute. They’re strong and breathable and can be washed in the washing machine.,” adds Ravi.
Was this change helpful?
“I’ve reduced our plastic bag use to almost zero. Which means I have saved something like 5000 plastic bags since that 2017 Christmas dinner. I really feel great about it. It is it’s so easy to use plastic produce bags from the supermarket but equally, it is very easy to use your own cloth bags and reuse them” says a proud Ravi.
Let us all pledge that in 2021, we will do more to save our environment and fix this problem with small individual initiatives.
