Western Australia became the first state to introduce the ban on single-use, non-compostable coffee cups on Friday, with businesses failing to comply threatened with hefty fines.
Instead, cafes can use compostable paperboard cups, which are excluded from the ban, or encourage customers to bring keep cups of their own, WA Environment Minister Reece Whitby says.
“This is an excellent move for the environment because we know that plastic persists in the environment for decades and decades and decades,” he told reporters on Saturday.
The change is part of a wider push by the WA government to reduce the prevalence of single-use plastics in the economy.
Also banned in the state on Friday were unlidded disposable plastic food trays, such as sushi trays and bento boxes.
Bans on several items, including microbeads and cotton bud sticks, came into effect in 2023, while sales of plastic produce bags and takeaway containers with lids will be prohibited from September.
Mr Whitby said more than a billion single-use plastic items, including more than 154 million coffee cups, will be saved from landfill annually.
WA ‘ahead of the pack’, minister says
Friday’s change came after a 12-month consultation process with businesses, which the state government says are broadly supportive of the changes and already use environmentally friendly alternatives to single-use plastics.
It hopes to keep the community onside by easing in the bans with a “common-sense” approach to enforcement.
“It’s all about education,” Mr Whitby said.
“We’re allowing cafes that might have old stocks of compostable coffee cups to trade them out.”
But WA authorities also carry a big stick to dissuade those who continually flout the restrictions, with fines of up to $5,000 on offer for individuals or $25,000 for businesses.
The latest bans come just in time for Clean Up Australia Day on Sunday, which has spurred scores of volunteers to remove plastic coffee cups from parks and waterways since 1990.
During the 2023 financial year, the group’s volunteers cleaned up almost 13,000 takeaway coffee cups, lifting them into the top 10 most common items of rubbish found.
Increased social activity in the aftermath of COVID-19 likely contributed to the rise in coffee cup waste, Clean Up Australia Day said in its annual Litter Report.
While South Australia has committed to removing the cups from sale in September, progress is slower in the more populous states, with New South Wales and Victoria among the jurisdictions yet to commit to a ban.
“Western Australia is ahead of the pack,” Mr Whitby said.
“We are the leading state in transitioning away from single-use plastics.”
AAP