Western Australia to ban plastic coffee cups
Single-use plastic coffee cups to be completely banned in an Australian state: Here’s what you need to know about the new rules
- WA bans plastic cups on March 1, 2024
Western Australia will ban all single-use coffee cups in favor of compostable alternatives by March 2024.
The rules only allow cardboard coffee cups and lids, urging coffee lovers to bring their own reusable alternative.
“Western Australians use more than 182 million takeaway coffee cups every year,” said a spokesman for the WA Department of Water and Environmental Regulation.
‘Most takeaway coffee cups end up in landfills, but a lot is also thrown away. There are no widespread recycling options and the cups contaminate roadside recycling systems.”
The ban includes disposable cups that look like paper but have a plastic liner on the inside that prevents them from being recycled.
Companies were told that the cost of switching to compostable coffee cups with a lid (above) will average about 7 cents per coffee
The WA government has asked companies to begin phasing out single-use plastic cups in preparation for the total ban.
It said the initial cost of switching to compostable cups would be about an extra seven cents per coffee.
However, it urged companies to consider that more low-cost options are likely to become available in the future, and that the toll for single-use plastics is putting a strain on the environment.
The cup ban is part of the WA government’s Plan for Plastics, which aims to drastically reduce single-use plastics by 2025 by banning items in four phases.
Disposable plastic shopping bags, straws and cutlery are already banned.
The next rounds of plastic bans will take place in WA on September 1, 2023, making loose polystyrene packaging, microbeads, cotton swabs with plastic stems, and polystyrene packaging for raw meat and seafood, degradable packaging plastics illegal.
South Australia has also committed to ban the sale of single-use plastic cups by September 2024.
The Victorian or NSW governments have not instituted bans on coffee cups.