Councillors will consider moving to ban plastic cups, bags and straws at council-run facilities and events at their meeting on Tuesday.
Greens Councillor Kerry Brown wants a report into phasing out single use plastics at council operations from the end of this year, and also phasing out single-use plastics at festivals like Winter Magic and the Blue Mountains Music Festival by December 2019. Labor Cr Romola Hollywood has also asked council for a briefing on the issue.
“Council has the authority ...when it’s approving development applications for events to require all packaging and foodware to be compostable,” Cr Brown said.
“We are a city in a world-heritage area. We should just do it.”
As part of the plan council would supply a list of suppliers of compostable single-use foodware and packaging to assist vendors.
It’s a move already popular in Sydney where several other councils have declared a war on plastic.
At their June council meeting Randwick Council resolved to bring in a ban on single-use items from all its operations and events from this month. It includes plastic bags, drink bottles and drinking straws. The festival ban comes in early next year, but an exemption will apply for emergency situations where single-use bottled water may be needed because of excessive temperatures. Canterbury Bankstown, Inner West and Parramatta councils are also investigating bans.
Cr Brown said some Mountains businesses were already actively dumping plastics - the major source of contamination for both compostable and recyclable waste.
“Most festival organisers I know would also like to do this. Not only are there different grades which can't be recycled together, or at all, but now that China has pulled out of the recycled plastic market, most of it has nowhere to go except landfill and the ocean.”
Marina Brown of the Fair Trade Shop in Katoomba initiated and master-minded recycling and composting at Winter Magic six years ago and said if council bans plastics it would help organisers and volunteers.
The Fair Trade Shop makes its own paper bags from old tourist brochures. Other shop owners, like Bruce Cash of Beautiful Bags also uses paper bags instead of plastic.
“Bruce was a supplier of mandatory wood and paper utensils for Marrickville Council’s festivals 20 years ago – he gave me the idea of controlling single-use plastics through the event DAs,” Cr Brown said.
Aunty Jack’s restaurant owner Dwayne Ninnis, who hails from Melbourne, said everyone there uses compostable takeaway food containers, cutlery, and or metal and paper straws so it was a given they would do the same when they opened in Katoomba this year. It’s an additional cost he is happy to wear, and if others were forced to comply at Winter Magic, it would make for a more level playing field.
The restaurant uses products from Matt Buckley of Superior Packaging Supplies in Lawson, who said 80 per cent of his business is now “compostable or biodegradable”. Mr Buckley already supplies to council’s information centres and the Hub, as well as Scenic World.
Marina Brown said it was more important than ever to reject plastic as a truckload of Blue Mountains Music Festival compostable waste was rejected this year because it was not deemed compostable. Because of this, bioplastics have been ruled out for the 2019 event.
Winter Magic treasurer and Katoomba Public P and C co-ordinator of food and waste at the Blue Mountains Music Festival, Toni Clarke, said ultimately they would like to see people bring their own plates, cutlery and keep cups to events with washing stations available.