Overview
It might be the oldest of its kind in Melbourne, but South Melbourne Market has a new-school attitude when it comes to helping out the planet, announcing it'll go entirely plastic bag-free from next week.
Joining the worldwide war against single-use plastic, market traders will be greening up the site by ditching all plastic shopping bags from Wednesday, April 11. Customers will now have the option of buying a recyclable paper bag or multi-use shopping bag onsite, borrowing a free 'Boomerang Bag', or bringing along their own from home.
The move seems a bit of a no-brainer, given the results of a South Melbourne Market survey last June, which found a huge 90% of shoppers supported banning single-use plastic bags and 96% were behind a campaign to get customers to BYO.
"Single-use plastic bags cause enormous damage to our environment from the point of production right through to disposal, particularly along the foreshore, in our waterways and parklands," explained South Melbourne Market General Manager Ian Sumpter. "In overwhelming support for this initiative, our shoppers have told us they're willing to help us reduce this impact by bringing their own bags, so we are supporting our traders to make the transition to a plastic bag free market."
The local initiative comes as businesses across Australia make moves to phase out plastic, with the country's biggest supermarket chains promising to be plastic bag-free by the end of the year. Supermarket giant Woolworths this week announced it'll make the move earlier than anticipated, axing single-use plastic bags from its stores nationwide from June 20.