Coffee shouldn’t cost the earth.

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To the Hon. Ministers Chris Steel, Penny Sharpe, Kate Worden, Leanne Linnard, Roger Jaensch, Steve Dimopoulous, Reece Whitby,

I’m contacting you as a resident who is deeply concerned about coffee cup pollution in Australia.

According to datasets that include Clean Up Australia, Keep Australia Beautiful and the Australian Marine Debris Initiative, coffee cups are some of the most habitually littered items in Australia.

Australia generates around 22,500 tonnes of hot cup waste annually, equating to an average of 72.7 cups per person, and a total of 1.84 billion single-use cups per year. Usually lined with plastic and sold with polystyrene lids, these cups are difficult to recycle and largely end up in landfill or our natural environment.

I commend the state and territory governments who have already banned some single-use plastics, such as straws, cutlery, and plastic plates and bowls, for showing a commitment to acting on plastic pollution.

Yet this alone will not be enough. According to 2019-20 waste figures, Australia is recycling just 16% of our plastic packaging, with the rest going to landfill or ending up in our environment.

With ocean plastic rapidly increasing, and more and more seabirds and marine animals turning up dead with plastic in their stomachs, we can no longer afford to put convenience before the welfare of our native wildlife.

The good news is earth safe alternatives for disposable cups already exist, such as reusable coffee cups that can be used time and time again.

Therefore, I ask you to:

* Ban all single-use coffee cups with plastic lids or linings by 2024, with temporary exemptions for compostable plastics that meet Australian standards (AS 5810 and 4736 only).

* Ban industrially compostable plastics in hot beverage cups by 2026 (still allowing home compostable cups).

* Phase out all disposable coffee cups by 2030, with support for consumers to transition to reusable cups.

I endorse the staged approach to phasing out single-use coffee cups outlined by the Australian Marine Conservation Society and the Boomerang Alliance, which includes measures to incentivise the use of reusable cups such as cup return schemes, a 25c levy on disposable coffee cups, and phasing out disposable cups in stadiums and public venues in 2024.

See the Boomerang Position Statement here: https://assets.nationbuilder.com/boomerangalliance/pages/54/attachments/original/1662423379/BA-Position-on-single-use-coffee-cups-and-lids-August-2022.pdf

We know this is possible. Western Australia has already taken action, with a ban on coffee cups containing plastic to commence in 2023. I urge all other state/territory governments to follow their lead and act today.

The future of our wildlife is in your hands.

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Your support for this petition will be sent as an email to the state/territory environment ministers. Please be respectful and refrain from personal attacks or derogatory language.

Coffee cups and their plastic lids are among the most littered items in Australia, regularly found in ocean cleanup surveys

1.84 billion single-use cups are used and discarded in Australia every year,¹ filling up our landfills and our oceans.

With plastic pollution of our oceans projected to triple by 2040,² we must rapidly shift away from single-use plastics and drive a nation wide adoption of reusable containers.

Together with the Boomerang Alliance of environmental organisations, we’ve developed a national proposal to phase out disposable coffee cups, starting with plastic lids and linings.

Sign the petition today and urge Australia’s governments to:

Ban all single-use coffee cups with plastic lids or linings by 2024, with temporary exemptions for compostable plastics that meet Australian standards.
Ban cups that aren’t home compostable by 2026.
Work to phase out disposable coffee cups by 2030, with support for consumers to transition to reusable cups.

Coffee shouldn’t cost the earth. Urge your state/territory government to phase out disposable plastic coffee cups today!

SOURCES:

Envisageworks. (2021). Plastic fates and flows in Australia.
The Pew Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ. (2019). Breaking the Plastic Wave.

Sign the petition today and urge Australia’s governments to:

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