Plastic Free July
1.5 million people in NSW are now participating in Plastic Free July.
Changing habits in July for lifelong impact
The annual Plastic Free July campaign connects and activates its network of community and organisations with the aim of supporting a society-wide move away from single use plastics, particularly in NSW.
The 2022 campaign reached 1.5 million NSW residents. Of these, 11% actively participated, with 360,000 people reporting making lasting behaviour change to avoid plastic waste. These participants started better habits (compared to non-participants) to avoid plastic items such as:
- disposable coffee cups
- soft drink bottles
- takeaway food containers
- food plastic wrap
- pre-packed meat and fish
- bin liner bags, and
- bottled detergents and soap.
A survey of the whole general population of NSW residents showed a lot of variation in people’s efforts to avoid plastic. A few behaviours, such as taking a reusable shopping bag or keeping leftover food in tubs rather than under plastic wrap, are becoming normalised. Many behaviours, including refusing plastic straws and avoiding soft drinks in plastic bottles, have around 50% adoption and spread rapidly in response to nudges from Plastic Free July. A few behaviours, such as buying bulk (unpackaged) foods and using a keep cup, have very low levels of adoption.
These findings from such a large sample size will give the EPA a great opportunity to put better policies in place and understand how the community feels about other plastic items as they are considered for possible future bans.
