In response to our current plastic consumer culture acting as a significant barrier in moving towards a sustainable future, a ground-roots movement has emerged to help us move away from such a dire fate, one bag at a time.
Boomerang Bags is a fast progressing community initiative that works to change our behaviour and reduce the use of plastic bags on a national and international scale. It operates by bringing local communities together to create bags, made completely of recycled and donated materials, as a means to provide shopping outlets, and in turn their customers, with a free alternative to plastic. Boomerang Bags provide a free, fun, sustainable replacement to plastic bags that is urgently needed in response to our current detrimental consumer practices.
Every year over 6 million tonnes of Rubbish is dumped into the ocean, 80% of this is plastic with a further 10% plastic bags. Australians use 10 million plastic bags a day! All of which are significantly resistant to bio degradation processes, with each bag taking over 500 years to break down, meaning every bag we have ever encountered still exists. Precious resources like water & energy are consumed to make plastic bags that are only used momentarily and then tossed in the bin bound for landfill, or worse, makes its way into the ocean.
This rubbish is causing immeasurable damage to marine life & their surrounding sensitive ecosystems. Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, and other marine mammals die annually from ocean pollution, ingestion of plastic bags or entanglement in marine debris. The same fate is also occurring for more than 1 million seabirds every year. Plastic pollution is a silent killer that is causing catastrophic damage to our planet and we need to act now.
Although Mackay’s chapter of Boomerang Bags is still in its infancy, support is quickly growing. If you are interested in being involved in a community that harbors pro-environmental behavior, creativity, community and fun! Then do not hesitate to get in touch via their facebook page. The Mackay Conservation Group is in full support of this movement and everything it represents.