The federal government will, in Brisbane today, launch its plan to phase out a number of common plastics to protect Queensland waterways. 

The government has announced an ambitious plan in partnership with Boomerang Alliance to ban all single-use plastics in four years.

The “national plastics ban” will see polystyrene and micro-plastics phased out by 2022, with all packaging to be “recyclable, reusable or compostable” by 2025

Director at Boomerang Alliance Jeff Angel welcomed the “substantial” move.

“It has some great, new initiatives, it’s not business as usual, it’s really going to push ahead on getting single-use plastics, and their awful pollution they cause out of our ocean,” he told Deborah Knight.

“We have what might be called ‘pilot projects’ by big companies, but there are hundreds and hundreds and thousands of outlets for these plastics.

“Every year we consume one million tonnes of single-use plastics, and 130,000 tonnes of that end up in the environment, and that’s just an appalling legacy of environmental destruction because that plastic lasts for hundreds of years.”

Click PLAY to hear the full interview with Deborah Knight below

Environment Minister Sussan Ley told Neil Breen Minister for Brisbane Trevor Evans had been championing the cause for some time.

“Today we’re talking about, as you say, the plastic in cigarette butts, the plastic in our clothes that gets in our waterways through our washing machine, and that awful stuff, expanded polystyrene, that seems to be around everything we buy,” she said. “We’re phasing that out as well.”

“I always say we’re not putting heavy-handed regulation in place.

“We’re asking industry to come with us and they are; it is in fact everyone at the table.”

Press PLAY below to hear the full interview with Neil Breen 

Image: Getty