Woolworths shoppers will be able to reduce waste by bringing their own containers to take home seafood, meat, and deli items. The company has revealed it is planning to trial an option for customers to provide their own packaging to cut back on disposable plastic.
The food retailer now plans to ask its staff to clean supplied containers before customers are given their orders, the Herald Sun reports.
Swab tests are being conducted to check the efficiency of the cleaning procedures.
Woolworths said they hope to get the trial 'up and running soon' and that they are working with local councils to ensure the 'proposed processes meet or exceed their regulations'.
Woolworths government relations manager Paul Crossley said the 'biggest challenge' would be preventing customers from overcharging because of the container's additional weight. He also said the company wanted to guarantee the system would comply with health and safety laws before it is rolled out.
A Woolworths spokesman said they are 'always looking for ways to run our stores more sustainably'. 'We understand the growing concerns from many of our customers about reducing plastics in our stores and we’re working hard to do just that,' a statement on their website reads. 'Our plan to tackle the plastic problem is focused on eliminating plastic where possible and to work towards ‘closing the loop’ by encouraging recycling through design, technology and clear communication to our customers'.
They have also partnered global zero-waste shopping provider Loop which sells products such as juice, ice cream and shampoo in reusable containers.
From 2021, shoppers will be able to purchase items in environmentally-friendly packaging which is delivered to their door, then picked up once it is empty to be cleaned and reused.
Woolworths has reduced plastic packaging of fruit and vegetables by 500 tonnes over two years. The change follows the supermarket giant's ban on single-use plastic bags in June 2018. Six months later they stopped selling plastic straws in their stores.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree

​If Rwanda could do it more than ten years ago, why can't other countries do it?
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree

Most Single-use Tampons and pads are made of bleached cotton, plastic, harmful fragrances that pollute our bodies as much as they pollute the environment they end up in. They also don’t break down for many hundreds of years.
Luckily we have plastic-free options. There is a medical grade silicone moon cup that you fold, put inside, it collects blood and then you dump the blood in the toilet. You can also wear reusable washable ultra absorbent zero smelling menstrual underwear that come in all sizes, colours and shapes.
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #reusable

How good is this? A Rockhampton primary school has collected almost 400k plastic bottle caps, which will be turned into prosthetic limbs. ❤️
Students have been collecting the lids over the past term and will send them to a company that melts the plastic and turns them into prosthetics for people injured in war. One student said it took about 500 plastic lids to make a hand.
"Our first goal was 10,000 bottle tops and then we smashed that by week one, and then we set a new goal of 50,000 and we smashed that by week four, and we set a new goal of 250,000 and we beat that by the end of term three."
Awesome job kids! 🙌
https://envision.org.au/envision-hands/
#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plasticfree

Most of the bottled water you buy is just glorified tap water. There are a few brands whose water really comes from springs and mountain streams, but most are just tap water that’s been purified.

• Only 1 out of 5 plastic bottles is recycled. The rest just becomes litter or get buried somewhere.
• It takes 1 PET plastic bottle 700 years to start decomposing. Bacteria, which usually helps in breaking down organic materials, don’t like petroleum based plastics. Technically, they can last forever.
• More than 100 million plastic bottles are used worldwide every day!
• 90% of the cost of bottled water is due to the packaging, not the water quality.
• 3 liters of water is used to package 1 bottle of water.
• •An estimate 1,500 plastic bottles end up as waste in landfills or thrown in the ocean every second.
• Plastic is listed as the number one threat to our marine ecosystem.

#northernbeachescleanupcrew #plastic #plasticfree

McGill University chemical engineering professor Nathalie Tufenkji decided to test tea bags after she was given one in a Montreal cafe that looked like it was made from plastic.
She asked her graduate student Laura Hernandez to purchase several tea bag brands from Montreal stores. The scientists then tested them to see if they left any plastic particles behind. The results, published in Environmental Science and Technology Wednesday, far surpassed the researchers' expectations.
"We were shocked when we saw billions of particles in a single cup of tea," Tufenkji told CBC News. In total, the researchers found that steeping a plastic tea bag at 95 degrees Celsius released around 11.6 billion microplastics and 3.1 billion nanoplastics into a single cup. That's much more than other foods and beverages commonly contaminated with plastics, Tufenkji told New Scientist. "We think that it is a lot when compared to other foods that contain microplastics," she said. "Table salt, which has a relatively high microplastic content, has been reported to contain approximately 0.005 micrograms plastic per gram salt. A cup of tea contains thousands of times greater mass of plastic, at 16 micrograms per cup."