Plastic Free July began in Perth in 2011. By 2015 the challenge to avoid single use plastic had gone global with 36 000 people participating in 85 countries!! The challenge allows you to select your pledge from choosing to refuse the Top 4 items (see below) for as little as one day through to pledging to refuse ALL single use plastic (including milk bottles, shampoo bottles, bread bags etc) for the entire month of July! By far the most popular registration received by the Plastic Free July organisers is the pledge to avoid the Top 4 for the entire month of July!
The Top 4
All Plastic Carry Bags
Disposable Plastic Water Bottles
Single Use Coffee Cups & Lids
Plastic Straws
Choose your location and sign up to take the challenge!
Mullumbimby is the first town to be registered as a whole community participant in the Plastic Free July challenge! Our town is piloting a strategy that seeks to accelerate the impact of the Plastic Free July challenge by directly engaging the traders who supply the Top 4 to restrict the supply of these items and asks their customers to tell them this change is welcome! We’ve started talking to traders but need your help to convince them all to get on board! Tell your fave shop keepers to check out the Trader Page on the Mullum Cares website to find out more:)
The Mullum pilot is being co ordinated by Mullum Cares and supported by Mullum SEED, the Mullumbimby Chamber of Commerce, The Byron Community College, the Byron Shire Council, Responsible Cafes and the Australian Sustainability Institute. In addition to the Mullum Cares website you can follow the project on the new community Facebook page:
Disposable Free Mullumbimby
Santos Organics are co ordinating an all inclusive Byron Shire Plastic Free July campaign that aims to inspire changes to the way we view, use and accumulate plastic in our lives. They aim to accelerate the transition to plastic free shopping by offering a 15% discount off bulk food purchases to locals who register on the project’s website www.plasticfreebyron.com. Get your discount tag and checkout the events planned including the Australian Premier of the film Bejing Besieged by Waste on June 8 and the Mullum Street Clean & Plastic Free Afternoon Tea on June 24!
Everyone should check out the wealth of resources on offer by the founding guardians of the initiative at www.plasticfreejuly.org.
This initiative is intended to be low pressure and fun! We want every person in the universe to participate in whatever capacity they feel only slightly uncomfortable with! Change feels uncomfortable at the start but this fun and achievable action is about trying out more sustainable ways of being so that some of the changes stick and become new habits.
Disposable Free Mullumbimby is a community Facebook page that exists for all Mullum activists to use to promote their projects. Human’s waste a lot. There is so much opportunity to look after everything we have better than we’re doing right now. The opposite of ‘disposing of’ is to ‘look after’ or ‘care for’:)
Let’s reject disposable and embrace a more caring way of being.
The Disposable Free Mullumbimby Facebook page is the main communication channel for this Plastic Free July project. The registrations are shared with the Plastic Free July founders in Perth so our figures will be included in the global results of our actions in July. They will only receive your first name and email address if you elect to recieve email updates from the global Plastic Free July global site.
We are hoping that the success of our town-wide effort will result in a new registration category of “Town/Suburb” on the main www.plasticfreejuly.org site. We are keen to create a ripple effect from our local actions as other regions see that plastic pollution reduction is massively accelerated when residents and their local businesses get together to break entrenched habits of giving and receiving single use plastics!
Sasha Mainsbridge, Mullum Cares
Mullum Cares is offering assistance to local business’s to consider what part they are able to play in reducing the impact of their business’s activities.
For all inquiries please contact Sasha Mainsbridge m: 0422 641 474 e: info@mullumcares.com.au