According to the National Plastics Plan 2021 by the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, currently, Australia produces 2.5 million tonnes of plastic waste each year, equating to 100 kg per person. Only 13% of plastic is recovered, and 84% is sent to landfill.

When I dig into statistics like these, I often feel so hopeless about our future dealing with the challenges of waste plastic management. And I often forget that there are people within our community tackling this issue in the most creative way possible, like Cesar, the founder of Aoracreo.

The pandemic inspired many of us, including Caro, the founder of Precycle Pantry, to take up our projects. Those projects we are always dreaming about doing when we have more time. Caro always wanted to start a business that contributed to a healthier planet. Since shopping sustainably has always been her passion, she came up with the idea to make it easier for people to do so. This is how Precycle Pantry came to be.

The Earth is a big place. It's so big that we can't even keep track of everything happening on it. And, when it comes to protecting our planet, there's still so much we don't know. That's why every small business, person, initiative, and project we get the chance to interview and write about in The Plastic Runner Blog, feels like a small victory for our team.

You're not the only one who loves to eat bread, and you're not alone in your love for it. According to Roy Morgan Research, nearly 11 million Australians bought bread in 2016.

If you are one of those consumers, you will know for sure that the package of that bread is made of plastic, and it is a single-use plastic package. Australians consume well over a million loaves of bread each day, which means that in just one week, Australians are leaving behind over 2000 tonnes of plastic.

Coffee cups are estimated to be the second-largest contributor to litter waste after plastic bottles. It is estimated that Australians use 1 billion disposable coffee cups each year.

We know, this is a shocking figure but it is also the reason why Flavia, who moved from Argentina to Melbourne in 2017, decided to do something about it and created Eco Enviro Concepts.

One of the expressions that I have heard the most during these “strange pandemic times” is « Have you washed your hands? ». Practising good personal hygiene is more important than ever before, but unfortunately this is resulting in increased plastic waste.