The Queensland government has said it will not wait for Victoria and NSW to come on board as it goes ahead with plans to ban single-use plastic bags.
The state’s Environment Minister, Steven Miles says he’s pushing for an east-coast ban on plastic bags but if the southern states won’t agree that won’t stop the Palaszczuk Government from going ahead and getting rid of them.
“It’s the best way for it to happen. What we don’t want is for people who live on the southern Gold Coast to drive to New South Wales if they forget their re-useable shopping bags,” Mr Miles told the ABC.
“It would be better if we could get a solution that would deal with those kind of cross-border issues.”
Plastic bags are used on average for 12-minutes but can take up to 1000 years to decompose. The Queensland government sees a plastic bag ban as a critical step in a long term plastic pollution reduction plan.
More details of the proposed ban are expected to roll out today. They follow similar bans already in place in South Australia, ACT, Northern Territory and Tasmania.
