We have partnered with Clean Up Australia with a campaign aimed to reduce the use of single-use, lightweight plastic bags across our stores. We can’t do this alone and call on you, our customers, to help by Saying No to Plastic when you shop with us.
We firmly support the #BanTheBag campaign to ban single-use plastic bags in NSW, and we will donate five cents for every shop that you Say No to plastic bags at the checkout until the end of July. With your help we aim to reduce plastic bag use at the checkout by 30 per cent, and will continue to call on the NSW Government for a statewide ban.
We encourage you all to make sustainable choices and want to help you make this choice. We will continue to offer you the choice of fruit boxes as an alternative to plastic bags, and encourage you to bring your own bags as we try to change the trajectory of our collective pollution. We now also offer the choice to purchase reusable paper bags sold at cost price as an additional option and we will continue to roll out initiatives over the coming months to help make this choice easier.
We see it as our responsibility to decrease our environmental footprint and drive change within our stores and nationwide. However, we are just one retailer, and the NSW Government needs to enact this ban to avoid us facing a frightening future where we pollute and destroy our marine wildlife.
Within three months, we hope to reduce the number of plastic bags distributed in our stores by 30 per cent, with about 1 million of our customers saying no to using plastic bags and contributing tens of thousands of dollars to Clean Up Australia, to amplify this campaign and get the bags banned.
Despite alternative carry bag options we are only too aware of our contribution to the five billion plastic bags distributed in Australia annually, and the 80 million plastic bags that end up in Australia’s litter stream.
Waleed Aly’s campaign for change, #BanTheBag, (https://www.change.org/p/ban-plastic-bags-across-nsw-victoria-and-wa) sheds much-needed light on the issue and hopefully motivates you to support our in-store initiatives.
