Australia is phasing out single

Along a riverfront in Fremantle, Western Australia, Julie Hughes gets to work grinding coffee beans as locals arrive for their morning caffeine fix.

The mix of walkers (and sitters) hunting down a flat white isn't anything out of the ordinary but, at this mobile coffee van, they're all leaving with ceramic mugs and keep cups.

"We've basically removed all our disposable cups, and we now provide a variety of reusable options for the customers," Julie says.

"Because we're on the river, a lot of people like to go for a wander … so we say, 'You can take it, bring it back when you're out this way again, or keep it, it doesn't really matter.'"

Inner Bean Coffee Van is one of a number of businesses ditching the disposables ahead of WA's ban on single-use coffee cups from next year.

For Julie, convincing customers to embrace the change hasn't been the challenge; it's been making sure the infrastructure is there to support it.

"Because we're a mobile coffee van, the hardest thing is the space and the dishes," she says.

"We basically bring everything home with us and we wash them in our kitchen dishwasher, which takes a long time."

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Australians use an estimated 1.8 billion disposable coffee cups each year, most of which end up in landfill, but there's no clear consensus about how to tackle the problem.

While WA and South Australia have put in place laws to ban their use in 2024, other states and territories are taking their own approaches with their time lines.

It's symptomatic of a wider challenge when it comes to single-use plastics: There isn't a whole lot of consistency around what's being phased out and when.

It's prompted calls for a stronger national road map, which researchers, environmental groups and retailers say would streamline the transition away from problematic plastics and reduce confusion for customers.

Each year, Australians consume close to 3.5 million tonnes of plastic, with single-use plastics making up about 30 per cent of that.

Single-use plastics are designed to be used for a short period and thrown away, but they can take a long time to break down and recovery rates are low.

For soft plastics — which include things like small packaging, bags, straws, cutlery and disposable cups — the recovery rate is less than 10 per cent.

For all plastics — which takes in more rigid items like beverage containers — this figure rises to about 18 per cent.

"Many of these categories are either difficult to recycle or recover," says Nick Florin, a research director at the University of Technology Sydney's Institute for Sustainable Futures.

"Part of the strategy in banning these is to address the problem at the front of the supply chain," Dr Florin says.

In 2021, state and territory governments signed on to a voluntary national agreement to phase out eight types of "problematic and unnecessary" plastic waste.

They included lightweight plastic bags, plastic misleadingly labelled "degradable", plastic utensils and stirrers, plastic straws, polystyrene food containers, polystyrene consumer goods packaging and microbeads in personal care products.

These single-use plastics were targeted due to their impact on the environment, alongside the availability of other alternatives.

But there has been "no further action taken" to ensure these ambitions are realised, says Shane Cucow, plastics campaign manager for the Australian Marine Conservation Society.

"States and territories have individually tackled some of those items like lightweight plastic bags, or plastic straws, plastic cutlery and stirrers," he says.

"But things like PVC packaging labels on things like fruit and veggies which had been included in the plan — absolutely nothing was done to actually make sure [they were phased out]."

Each year, WWF-Australia releases a scorecard assessing state and territory governments' progress in phasing out 13 of the most problematic and unnecessary single-use plastic products.

It covers the items covered in the national agreement, alongside other single-use plastics that weren't targeted, like coffee cups and lids, takeaway containers and heavy-weight plastic bags.

Jurisdictions that have laws, or where laws are under development to phase an item out, receive the highest score for that category (3 points).

This is followed by a commitment to phase out by a specified date (1.2 – 2 points); commitment to consider phasing items out in the future (1 point); or not considering (0 points).

As part of the WWF scorecard, governments are provided with an opportunity to review the data for their states and territories, and changes are made in cases where they are able to provide supporting evidence (which must be documentation that is available on the public record).

Between 2019 and 2023, every jurisdiction made progress in phasing out single-use plastics.

But, as the chart below shows, this data is not always linear. For example, scores may reflect that a state or territory has pledged a ban in one year but decided against it by the next.

According to WWF's forthcoming report for 2023, every state and territory received the highest mark (3) for plastic bags — one of the key items targeted in the 2021 agreement.

It's a similar story for items like plastic plates and bowls, straws, cutlery and expanded polystyrene cups and containers used for takeaway food. They've been phased out everywhere except the NT and Tasmania, which have committed to doing so by 2025.

Western Australia and South Australia are now leading the scorecard, due to state-based action plans that go beyond the ambitions outlined in the national agreement.

Western Australia has put in place policies to phase out all 13 problematic single-use plastics, while South Australia has done so for eight of the items identified (and has made a commitment to phase out the remainder by 2024).

In contrast, Tasmania fell to the bottom of the scorecard, followed by the Northern Territory in second-last place.

In a statement, Tasmania's Environment Minister Roger Jaensch says a key consideration in determining what products are banned and when "is the availability and suitability of alternatives currently in the market."

He says Tasmania is "also leveraging off the knowledge and experiences of other states and territories."

Lauren Moss, the NT's environment minister, says work is underway to implement actions in the NT Circular Economy Strategy, which has proposed phasing out other single-use plastics like microbeads in personal health care products, EPS consumer goods packaging, and helium balloons by 2025.

Mr Cucow says Australia has benefited from "a race to the top between many of the states and territories [who] are competing against each other."

"But now what we've got is a mish-mash of items that are banned in one state but not banned in another state."

This inconsistency goes to the heart of the challenges facing governments, retailers and consumers.

While WA and SA are forging ahead with plans to phase out single-use coffee cups in 2024, at the time of writing it's not being considered by Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania and NSW (which is releasing an updated plan this year).

Likewise, while WA has taken action on the use of produce bags and SA has committed to doing so by next year, it's not yet on the cards for Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT, while other states and territories are considering the issue.

"I think all the retailers would agree that the most complex part of this transition has been the lack of a national framework," offers Paul Zahra, CEO of the Australian Retailers Association.

"That makes it very difficult to plan and organise, and it's costly, because when you're making that transition you want to be making the transition for the entire company, not in a piecemeal approach."

It's a sentiment echoed by Dr Florin, who says one of the challenges in reducing consumption of single-use plastics and shifting to more sustainable alternatives is "the need to coordinate and align on the levers that are driving the change".

So, why doesn't Australia have a broader national framework to tackle the problem? It's a complex issue, and the answer depends on who you ask.

Mr Cucow says action in this space is "highly dependent" on the political context and priorities of each state and territory.

Mr Zahra, too, points to the complexity of getting "eight jurisdictions to come together and agree to a program."

"Common sense would say that this should have had a national framework — it would have improved the compliance, but equally, the speed with which we made this change."

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A spokesperson for the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water says state and territory governments "lead on managing single-use plastics phase-outs and national harmonisation of those phase-outs".

At a meeting of Australia's environment ministers last month, they endorsed a work plan to develop a road map for the harmonisation of single-use plastic phase-outs.

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Even with a more comprehensive national plan, conservationists have warned these ambitions will not be met unless voluntary targets are backed up by tough regulation.

Mr Cucow believes a national register of banned plastics is needed, alongside rules to prevent companies from using hard-to-recycle plastics.

Regulations may be "much, much easier" to instigate with a national framework, says Mr Zahra, who adds that retailers want to work with governments to tackle the issue.

But, he says they need sufficient consultation and lead time to work through their inventory and make the transition.

"If all the states are working together, we really would work to what's the gold standard and actually be consistent across the country.

"In my mind, a big responsibility actually falls on government to communicate this to retailers and for retailers to communicate these changes with their customers," Mr Zahra adds.

If there's one thing everyone can agree on, it's the need for further investment and coordination around the move to reusable items.

Plastic consumption has "far exceeded our capacity to ever be able to safely recover and manage it", Mr Cucow says, and support is needed to ensure sustainable alternatives are "standardised across industry".

It's a sentiment echoed by Julie, who credits community grants and grassroots programs for helping her make the transition away from single-use plastics.

While the change has proven a crowd-pleaser for her business, there are still broader challenges to work through when it comes to space and dishes.

She believes these issues are likely to be a "sticking point" for some mobile businesses and will require a sustainable solution.

But she adds that a lot can be learned from other operators helping drive change on the ground level.

"When you see other like-minded people and businesses, you get ideas from them and share your ideas as well," Julie says.

"Even if it's just on a small scale, providing some keep cups to start to make the transition really helps."

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