Page 369 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 19 February 2019
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As a government, we have a responsibility to evaluate the effectiveness of territory laws. The plastic bag ban is no exception. It was reviewed first in 2012 and again in 2014. The most recent review, requested in December 2017 by Minister Rattenbury, asked the Office of the Commissioner for Sustainability and the Environment to investigate the efficacy of the existing Plastic Shopping Bags Ban Act 2010; make recommendations as to how and whether improvements could be made to improve overall environmental outcomes; and analyse options, where possible, through triple-bottom-line and cost-benefit analysis.
Unfantastic plastic: review of the ACT plastic shopping bag ban was tabled in the Assembly on 20 September 2018. Drawing on analysis undertaken by the Australian National University, the report concluded that the ban has had a marked impact on the ACT’s consumption of single-use plastic bags but that plastic consumption appears to be gradually returning to the levels seen prior to the ban’s introduction. This is for a range of reasons, including population growth and household consumption. The commissioner noted that there is no easy solution to our plastic addiction, and that when it comes to shopping bags every alternative has its own implications in respect of carbon emissions, energy, water use and pollution.
A key to reducing these impacts is to reuse bags as many times as possible, consistent with our ambition for a more circular economy. A number of reform options were explored in the report, including the potential for increasing the minimum thickness of plastic shopping bags, requiring all plastic bags to be biodegradable and compostable, using price signals to influence plastic bag consumption, and even banning plastic shopping bags altogether.
Drawing on the analysis of these reform options, the commissioner developed four recommendations: one, a mandatory plastic bag disclosure scheme; two, minimum plastic bag pricing; three, improved governance of plastic bag regulation; and, four, research synergies for compostable plastic and household organic collection schemes.
Importantly, the commissioner recognised that further consultation with the community and industry would be needed if these recommendations, particularly mandatory plastic bag disclosure and minimum pricing, were to be developed further. The commissioner’s recommendations need to be considered further in the context of their impact on equity and cost-of-living concerns from a business perspective, while also ensuring that there are no perverse outcomes that lead to a worse overall outcome for the environment.
In light of the commissioner’s report and the recommendations, we need to further consider the range of options for the future of plastic bags. Detailed analysis needs to be undertaken on the social, environmental and economic impacts.
As noted in the report, measures could include an outright ban on plastic bags. In late 2018, New Zealand committed to an effective ban on plastic bags, with bags below 70 microns to be phased out by mid-2019. New Zealand took this step after agreeing in principle to phase out single-use plastic bags, subject to the outcome of consultation.
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