Zoe Moffatt
Macedon Ranges council has strengthened its commitment to reducing waste, with the adoption of its single-use plastic policy to ban single-use plastics at council facilities, services and events.
Council voted to implement the policy on May 24 in order to align with the single-use plastics action plan and the state governments ban on using single-use plastics, which came into effect on February 1, 2023.
Councillor Rob Guthrie said the policy is very urgent and important, especially when considering how much plastic is already in the oceans.
“Our oceans currently have 75 to 199 million tons of plastics in them,” Cr Guthrie said. “That is a really scary statistic, and it just demonstrates how important it is.”
“We’ve also seen the situation with the attempted recycling of soft plastics and I think we’re experiencing a bit of difficulty at the moment even with collecting it ourselves… there was a lot of plastic [at the transfer station].
“This is a critical policy, it’s urgent and I hope everybody gets on board and stops using the stuff.”
Cr Mark Ridgeway agreed with Cr Guthrie and said single use plastics are throughout the planet’s biosphere.
“All levels of food production, in all species, plants, animals, right throughout we can now find fragmented plastics,” Cr Ridgeway said.
“Everyday in the food that we eat, we consume single-use plastics and the worrying thing is that the health impact of that we do not know yet.”
“But there is evidence … that there are significant impacts on the health and to believe that humans are somehow or other immune from that is just false hope.”
This policy follows council’s notice of motion in June 2018, to commit to phase out single-use plastic across all facets of council business.
Council said in the agenda that while there may be initial cost implications to subsidise compostable materials, the reduction in general waste will result in significant ongoing savings.
