Sustainable beauty brands often go to lengths to demonstrate their commitment to both the environment and you, the customer, through a combination of plant-based or natural ingredients or charitable responsibilities within their community or abroad. However, many of these sustainable practices do little to curb our world’s biggest problem – plastic pollution.
Every year, every Australian uses on average 130kg of plastic, of which only 9% is actually recycled. And if you’ve seen the recent news that Sydney Council trucks have mixed recycling with rubbish for “more than a decade”, then you know the problem goes far deeper than buying from sustainable beauty brands.
So how are we to reduce plastic waste? OR, more so, why should we reduce single-use plastic? If you love our sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, ragged mountain ranges, drought and flooding rains, you already know the answer to the second question.
As for how? That’s where environmentally-friendly buying practices like refillable shampoo bottles and sustainable body wash come into the mix. Reduce plastic waste while nurturing your luscious locks of hair and the rest of your gorgeous body.
The Problem With Single Use Plastic
CleanUp Australia defines ‘single-use’ plastic as items that are used once and then thrown away. It all sounds pretty self-explanatory, right? Reckon you could name all the single-use plastic items you’ve used today? We’ll give you a list of a few common culprits.
- Plastic Bottles: Australians buy almost 15 billion plastic bottles every year.
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- Take Away Coffee Cups: We use around 1.8 billion cups and 1.5 billion coffee lids annually.
- Plastic Utensils (cutlery): The Australian government announced plans to phase out “single-use plastics” by the end of 2025, including banning the use of expanded polystyrene food containers by December 2022.
- Plastic Straws: In 2020, Australians used nearly 1.3 billion straws.
- Plastic Bags: Seven of eight Australian states or territories have bag bans.
- Cling Wrap: 150,000 tonnes of cling wrap ends up in Australian landfill every year.
But that’s okay because we have recycling here in Australia, right? Unfortunately, this is where we introduce another definition from CleanUp Australia, known as Wish-cycling. These are all the items you wish could be recycled, only to discover that only a tiny fraction of the plastic we throw away is recycled.
Contrary to popular and wishful thinking, you cannot recycle everything you throw away. And because many of us don’t know the difference, recycling bins can quickly become contaminated, leading to increased costs in sorting the recycled items, plus the time taken to halt or repair technology due to damage caused by non-recyclable things.
With all of that in mind, did you know that you can’t recycle single-use plastic through your standard recycling bin? Yeah, that’s a problem. So how do we avoid them?
Avoiding Single Use Plastic
Most of our single-use plastic avoidance strategies are commonplace, while others are just picking up steam in their goal to reduce plastic waste.
- Reusable shopping bag
- Refillable water bottle
- Reusable coffee cup
- Reusable metal or wooden straw
- Beeswax food wraps instead of cling wrap
Unfortunately, you cannot swap out every single-use plastic with something more sustainable.
NSW Plastic Bans
Our landfills are full of single plastics, with many coming from things we buy at the supermarket. To curb plastic pollution in NSW, the state government will ban some of the most littered single-use plastic items under the Plastic Reduction and Circular Economy Act 2021. Aiming to prevent nearly 2.7 billion plastic items from entering NSW’s coastal, marine and bushland environments over the next 20 years, the ban will take place in stages.
From 1 June 2022:
- The supply of lightweight plastic bags (bags with handles 35 microns thick or less at any part of the bag and are partly or wholly plastic) is banned.
From 1 November 2022:
- The supply of single-use plastic cutlery, stirrers, straws*, plates and bowls is banned.
- The supply of expanded polystyrene (EPS) food service items (including EPS clamshells, cups, plates and bowls) is banned.
- The supply of single-use plastic cotton buds is banned.
- The supply of rinse-off personal care products containing plastic microbeads is banned.
Other states are also joining the fight against plastic pollution, with seven out of eight Australian states and territories committed to banning single-use plastics (at the time of writing).
Recycling Soft Plastics with REDcycle
While hard plastics are easily disposed of in your recycling bin at home, soft plastics need to be taken care of elsewhere.
Another easy way to reduce plastic waste in Australia is with REDcycle. Positioned at supermarkets across the country, REDcycle is a Melbourne-based company tasked with recycling single-use soft plastics as straightforwardly as possible.
You collect your soft plastics and drop them off at your nearest REDcycle collection bin (typically located near the checkout), and they will do the rest. And don’t worry if you’re a fan of supermarket home delivery–the delivery person will take your soft plastics off your hands!
Plenty of businesses have partnered with RED Group to reduce the amount of plastic packaging going to landfills. For example, My Soda Australia, a sustainable beauty brand that is all about cruelty-free, plant-based ingredients and a better-for-environment promise, uses clever refill packs designed to reduce plastic waste by 80%. Also based in Melbourne, these soft plastic refill pouches are 100% recyclable with REDcycle and are reused for community projects like building play equipment for children.
Curb Plastic Pollution in the Shower
Each refill pouch contains 500ml of our plant-based formulas and delicious fragrances, with a 15% discount compared to our 350ml hard plastic bottles (made in Australia from recycled plastics). From sustainable hair care products to body wash and premium hair treatments and styling products, My Soda wants to help you curb plastic pollution in the shower. What started with refillable shampoo bottles and conditioners has led to refillable body wash bottles that make recycling easier than ever!
With My Soda, once you’ve purchased your first bottle, you never need to repurchase another unless you’re switching formulas. Though we have to admit, the light blue design makes me want to show them off to as many of my friends as possible. Or, as one of their customers said about their Lime Drenched Coconuts Body Wash, “It’s the best way to spice up your shower time, giving you major holiday vibes that will leave you with the scent of lime and coconuts.”
My Soda supports these many plant-based ingredients by saying no to a bunch of nasty chemicals you might find in more mainstream products. On top of reducing plastic waste and saying no to more pollution, we have strict rules about what goes into our plant-based formulas.
My Soda products are free from Parabens, SLES & ALS, Propylene Glycol, Triclosan, EDTA, Harsh Detergents, Petrochemical Cleansers and Mineral Oils.
As for how to get the most out of your My Soda experience, simply find the refill pouch you need, and top off the original bottle with one of our 500ml refill pouches. Then, gather up your refill pouch, wash it out and dispose of it at your local REDcycle bin.
Reduce plastic waste one bottle of shampoo, conditioner, or body wash at a time with My Soda and REDcycle!
