New Zealand Plastic Bag Ban – What Happens Now?
How’s everyone coping with the plastic bag ban commenced on 01 Jan 2019?
Well, I have a friend who is currently anxious about how there is no more ‘free’ kitchen bin liner, not sure about you.
But I am surely, truly proud on how New Zealand is one of the First country in the world who commenced this act. Not only that, they will further push it to the extent on the ban of all single-use plastics around mid 2019. I am sure this could keep NZ shores cleaner and kiwis should be so proud of yourselves!
The rest of the world is catching themselves up with this ban as well and I look forward to see more and more countries apply this ban.
If you take a look around you and think about how much plastic you could use and could trash….you would find it scary.
Hence, it is not hard to imagine, things like these do happen some where on mother Earth right at this second:
I am not quite sure on the reason behind this, but I did find a few interesting listings on TradeMe on supermarket plastic bags:
Hmmm…I hope you are not buying these though as I really don’t see a point apart from trying to be funny maybe?
reason to ban single-use plastics
1. Plastic bags looks like floating jellyfishes to sea turtles and dolphins which they feed on.
2. Large mammals like whales wold accidentally ingest plastic as they feed in large portions.
3. Plastics exist in all shapes and sizes even in different forms like a fishing net. This could twine onto marine animals causing suffocation and starvation.
4. Recent scientific report shows these plastics that we threw would came back to us and harm our body in the form on micro beads. Imagine you could be feeding your newborn micro beads unintentionally but the truth is, the next generation could be growing up with plastic IN them since a newborn.
5. It takes forever long to degrade and decompose plastic and who-knows-when, but what if we will be watching our grand children living in plastic waste because there is no longer any land to fill them.
There are countless more to go on but I will stop here because these 5 points are scary enough.
What can we do?
Reduce – Buy less plastics – avoid buying anything that is over packaged.
Reuse – Use your items as many times as possible.
Recycle – Recycle properly.
reusable alternatives
Okay, the whole point of this blog is sharing some ideas on some great stuff that I am currently using to achieve “REDUCE” part.
The first things I’ve got way way before the plastic bag ban commencement are the grocery shopping bags.
I will keep these foldable grocery shopping bag in purse:
And these grocery shopping trolley bags in the back of car seat so I will remember to grab them when I head over to nearest supermarket:
Not long after these two types, I decided to go further and reduce buying packaged fruit and veges. This is when I realised those plastic bags are still available in rolls for you to help yourself tear one off the roll when you need to grab one. Nah! I don’t want it either but the bags I had weren’t suitable to contain loose fruits and vegetables, so I got some mesh produce bags with draw strings, colour codes so I could use smallest red ones for confectionery :
Definitely a set of metal straws. There are heaps of reusable straws combinations and I think a simple 5pcs should be enough. For general drinks, medium diameter ones for smoothies and large ones for bubble tea if you are a fan of them. While looking for the best set, I found straws made with glass? Hmmm, couldn’t help but them a bit intimidating…I wonder if they shatters…Oh and I added a set of spoon and fork to the set and carry them with me in my purse. Happy as!
I am a mugaholic and I am obsessed with buying drink bottles, cups and mugs. Bring your own coffee to-go cup is more and more common these days. So a coffee cup and water drink bottle is something I see myself must have!
I bought this Keep Cup from Stevens and I looooove my water drink bottle bought online.
Lastly, and the most difficult part actually – is to bring your own food to-go containers. I personally don’t like to use those Sistema lockable food containers for hot food because I find the food smell would stay in the container forever AND the colour stains no matter how hard I try to wash them off. They are otherwise perfect for spice and dried food storage. So I initially bought glass bowls and bring them around, after sick of the weight of it (and I will have to carry bigger hand bags whenever I need to bring it with me) and the incident where my colleague broke one accidentally, I started to search online and seek for alternative – something that is light weight and does not take too much room! And I found them – these silicon foldable locking containers! I was over the moon to solve this big problem, I mean THEY ARE FOLDABLE WONDERFUL!!!
That’s it so far from me and I look forward to find more environmentally-friendly goodies and would be great to hear more ideas.