Here are some other things we should ban

SUPERMARKETS are saying good riddance to single use plastic bags ahead of official deadlines. But there are a few more things we should ban to improve our planet, writes Victoria Hannaford.

SO a major supermarket chain has got the jump on a nationwide plastic bag ban.

Good on you, Woolworths.

The supermarket group has announced it will be getting rid of single use plastic bags from today in many of its outlets in Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia and NSW, ahead of withdrawing them completely across the country in July this year. The bags are already banned in South Australia, the ACT, Northern Territory and Tasmania.

Coles are joining in, and have also announced they’ll be getting rid of bags in some stores this month.

If you’ve ever seen someone bag up a solitary bottle of milk — a product that already comes with a handle for carrying — it’s pretty obvious we’ve become unthinking about the use of plastic bags and the volume of waste single use plastics create. We’ve been clutching them in their billions every year, and according to Clean Up Australia, only three per cent of plastic bags are recycled.

The rest of the bags — 3.76 billion of them end up as landfill in Australia every year — can take between 20 to 1000 years to break down. That’s one hell of a pile of garbage.

But there are so many other questionable conveniences that we have absorbed into modern life. They might be viewed as handy or a quick fix, but do us absolutely no good in the long term.

Here’s a list of other things we should ban, pronto.

Goodbye and good riddance. (Pic: Angelo Velardo)

Disposable coffee cups

Yes, it’s one of those impossible conundrums. How can you remember to grab your reusable coffee cup if you haven’t even had a coffee yet? But the idea that you just slug down a cup of joe and fling the cup in the bin within a few minutes is a kind of madness. It’s not like we’re short of options to replace the disposable coffee cup. A mug, anyone? Or a lightweight reusable cup? There are plenty around. I remember with great fondness the first time I laid eyes on a KeepCup. While I’d seen other reusables, the size and design indicated this one had clearly been created by coffee lovers. It was a thing of beauty and took away that strangely uncomfortable feeling about the flagrant waste that accompanied my morning flat white. Now if we could just get rid of that mad-as-a-sack-of-rats feeling that comes with the third coffee of the day, everything about caffeine would be perfect.

Leaf blowers

They’re noise polluters and annoying to all within earshot. Put down the blower, take off the earmuffs, try a rake and the world will thank you.

Prepackaged fruit and veg

Yes, it seems like our supermarkets are getting woke to the huge contribution they and we, as customers, collectively make to landfill. But let’s have a serious look at what’s happening away from the registers, because last time I checked, fruit and veg already have their own packaging, in the form of skin, perfectly designed by nature. So why are the big chains still bagging up bunches of bananas? Or hermetically sealing a single cucumber? It’s completely fruity. If you want to stock up on your five a day, it’s waste that supermarkets are making impossible to avoid.

WTF @Coles - bananas come already packaged! Stop putting this stuff in plastic! #waronwaste #Plastic pic.twitter.com/AUVwgO2iBW

— LyrianFlemingParsley (@lyrianfleming) March 24, 2018

Plastic bottled water

If you really want to freak yourself out about the way we treat the planet, look up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. No, it’s not some kind of cruise liner for fans of those freaky faced dolls from the 80s. It’s a huge floating mass of rubbish floating in the Pacific Ocean, and the majority of it is plastic. Nobody in their right mind would want to consciously contribute to this planetary shame, so for those of us lucky enough to have unlimited access to fresh drinking water, it’s time to rethink paying for H2O in a plastic bottle that could end up floating in the oceans. Go to the tap and fill up a cup, ya big baby.

Travelators

When everyone has suitcases with wheels, what is the point of a travelator that moves at the same pace as a drunk snail? You’ve been sitting on a plane for literally hours; try walking it off and reducing your risk of DVT at the same time.

Plastic yokes

While they’re handy for keeping a tinnie with its family of beers — no one wants to be accused of being a few beers short of a six pack — once these supposedly practical bits of plastic find their way into the ocean, they’re exactly the kind of thing that can be ingested by a turtle or other marine life and end up killing them, which is a pretty sobering thought. Suddenly that frosty one doesn’t seem so appealing, does it? Stick to a biodegradable six pack holder and we can all have a brew in peace.

Wet wipes

I’ve got one word here: fatbergs. For some unknown reason, toilet paper manufacturers have created ‘luxury’ wet wipes that aren’t supposed to be flushed down the loo. Except they are, and then they bunch together with other material in the sewer and create giant obstructions, known as fatbergs. Queensland Urban Utilities workers found some in their sewerage system last year, and said the cost of repairs could run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Tiramisu

Yes, it was a somehow the hit dessert of the 90s. But like its companion 90s fad mood rings it is a complete joke. What kind of a dessert has soggy biscuits as its main ingredient? It should never be on any menu ever, when another dessert — literally anything else — could rightfully take its place.

Originally published as Here are some other things we should ban