Jemma Buckland on creating a plastic-bag free New Zealand
While loading boxes of fabric into the back of her sister’s car, Jemma told her story of helping start the Karori based Boomerang Bag group, how getting to know the community has grown her confidence, and the group’s dream of creating a plastic-bag free New Zealand.
What is Boomerang Bags?
Boomerang Bags is an initiative started in Australia by a couple of ladies who wanted to reduce waste going to landfill. To achieve this, and to raise awareness around single-use plastic bags, they’re diverting fabric donations from landfill and simultaneously creating community groups who turn the fabric into re-usable tote bags. The ‘boomerang’ concept behind it is you borrow a bag and bring it back to a drop-off point or a business which supports the initiative. Or you can just fill it up with beer and take it to your mate’s place that night and leave it there for them to use it at the vege market the next day. It’s really about having free, accessible, shared reusable bags out there in the community.
What’s so bad about plastic bags anyway?
Single-use plastic bags have only one intention for their life: to move food from A to B. Yet New Zealanders use a billion plastic bags each year; Americans use 100 billion. Where are they going? They’re going ‘away’, but ‘away’ isn’t a place. ‘Away’ is where they’ve just found a whale washed up dead and completely infertile due to the high levels of Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB’s) in its system. While early plastics had many plant-based components and date back to the 1600’s, the synthetic plastics that we know today weren’t invented until the early 1900’s. So if modern plastic has only been around for 100 years and we’re already starting to see massive health-related issues in the animals we eat, what does that say for us? One of the stats that really got me going was how plastic bags take 500 years to decompose. Plastic bags became commonplace in grocery stores in the 1980s, so we’re 37 years in for the first ones that were mass-produced.
It was just this morning, when I was sitting on the bus, that I counted the years and went, hooooly shit. We’re only 37 years into a 500 year process and we’re already making more than we can cope with.
So are plastic bags recyclable or not?
You can recycle plastic bags but not in your everyday recycling bins. It’s actually more dangerous to do that because they jam up the systems and then they might have to throw out an entire batch which could be an entire truckload collected that morning. My street gets collected once a week, and then there’s every other street in the city, in the country — imagine if we’ve all just thrown a couple of plastic bags in there. We’re all guilty of doing it.
But! There is a soft plastics recycling initiative where certain supermarkets across the country have a bin you can put your soft plastics into; ‘bread bags, frozen food bags, toilet paper packaging, confectionery and biscuit wrap, chip bags, pasta and rice bags, courier envelopes, shopping bags, sanitary hygiene packaging — basically anything made of plastic which can be scrunched into a ball.’ It gets shipped to Australia, melted down and repurposed into things like park benches and parts for children’s playgrounds. It’s cool because it means we’re not using 100% virgin plastic, but through the process some of the original makeup is lost so they have to put a certain amount of brand new plastic in, to make sure it’s strong enough to mould. So yes, you can recycle plastic bags — but it’s not 100% recycled product; it’s more like a down, sideways-cycle. The fact is it’s still plastic, and it’s still in our environment.
What’s the big picture goal for Karori Boomerang Bags?
We want it to be bigger than just Karori; the Boomerang Bag movement has exploded so quickly that the Australian group who started it can’t keep up with all of the communities popping up around the world. We’ve been in touch with people from Newtown, Kelburn, Wadestown and Mirimar who have asked how they can start it in their own communities. There’s also more than 30 other Boomerang Bag or similar groups we know of so far in New Zealand, and we’ve let them know we’ve applied for funding to become the New Zealand hub to support the other community groups.
Ultimately, we ‘crazy-bag-ladies’ would like to see New Zealand be a plastic-bag free country. If we can coordinate nationally, it would change the national perspective. We could start to build a change in mindset from so many different angles that it would impact the bigger picture.
We might have more success in changing legislation and getting whole supermarket chains on board rather than the local business owner. You might ask, what can one person do in this little community over here? But in reality there’s already 30+ other existing communities, so let’s put the pressure on from all angles to make it happen.
Why is New Zealand, being supposedly ‘clean and green’, not leading this?
There’s a lot of different theories behind why New Zealand didn’t change the legislation two years ago when it was previously put to parliament. There’s the whole convenience factor; our fast lifestyle and the need for convenience. Other people put a spin on it in terms of oil companies being in the right pockets and saying “keep buying our plastic products”. There’s also the increased awareness of germs leading to people wanting excessive sanitary conditions — so now you go to the supermarket and you get one bag for your meat, one bag for this, and one bag for your other thing. Even when I take my own bag, if the checkout person sees I’ve got a meat product they still say “would you like that in a plastic bag?” Supermarkets have even started putting plastic bags at the meat aisle, so now you don’t even have to risk a little bit of meat juice on you or your trolley. But what happens when you spill some soup on your shirt at home? You put it in the wash. So that’s all I intend to do with a boomerang bag; if my curry spills or the packet of meat spills, I’ll just wash it!
What have you learnt about coordinating a volunteer community?
Working with volunteer communities is so different compared to the line of work I’m used to. As a Project Manager, I’m used to working with government agencies and budgets, people who are really aware of timelines and the delivery of things, whereas when you’re working with people who are giving up their spare time, instead it’s, “what do you feel you can cope with? What are you happy to do?”
It’s also about asking them why they’re volunteering, because when somebody works a job you don’t usually ask “why are you doing this job?” But with volunteering, there’s emotion and passion involved.
We’ve got a lot of volunteers who have gotten involved because they just love sewing! It does mean it’s been a predominantly female group here in Karori which isn’t intentional. Our target audience is people use plastic bags. That’s probably 99.9% of the population, but it just so happens that sewing is stereotypically a woman’s hobby. We do need to get guys talking about it because they’ve got just as much reason to be using the end product as we do. They’re a part of our community and our environment and our lives, but we can’t zero in to focus on tackling that aspect just yet. First, we want to focus on getting the message and the bags out there by any means we have available, and hopefully it will open the next level of conversation.
How much of your free time is this taking up?
Too much! We’re pushing really hard at the moment because we want to launch at the end of June and release 1000 bags into the Wellington community for Plastic Free July. A large portion of them will probably go to the Karori New World, and there’s a few other businesses in our area and the Wellington region who are already eager. We’re currently at over 600 bags, so I think we’ll make it. We’ve done all of the set-up to get a system in place, and now we’ve just got to keep up with our volunteers! Our volunteer contact list just for Karori is about 50 people who come to the weekly working bee or make bags in their own time, and there’s a load more volunteers all around Wellington coming to the bees or getting involved by sharing our Facebook posts. So it’s keeping up with collecting the donations, sorting the fabric, getting it down to the working bee, and getting all the other things done! But myself and the team are happy to put in the extra hours to get it really well set up, and then hopefully more systems will come into place to keep it going. It’s something that we all believe in, and believe it’s a good way to spend our time and energy.
How did you get involved in Boomerang Bags?
Through a completely unrelated community! I’m part of a facebook group called Gardeners Swap Group where Wellingtonians give away or swap gardening supplies and produce. In February this year I’d been pulling out a whole bunch of raspberry canes which pop up from my neighbour’s garden, and a lady said “I’ll come around and pick them up”. We were having a chat and she told me she was trying to kick off Boomerang bags here in Karori.
Before I knew it, she was dropping fabric ‘round for me to start cutting. Two days later we were having our first committee meeting where I meet two other complete strangers who live just around the corner from me.
How have you benefited from being part of this community?
It’s been amazing. I’ve met so many people in Karori I never would have otherwise. I’m surprised I haven’t run into Ali before now. She’s involved in the creative arts and festival scene in Wellington, and she lives just around the corner from me. Both her and Emma are at very different stages in their lives to me — Emma’s a full-time mum and relief teacher and Ali’s kids are starting at school so she’s getting back into working more — I probably never would have come across them otherwise. They’re both really cool chicks and the energy we bounce off each other for this project gives me the confidence to be more ballsy. If I wasn’t helping lead the charge — if I was just somebody attending the working bee — I’d be really shy. I’d just be a lurker from the sidelines if I even got involved at all.
How have you gotten other people involved?
Between the three of us, in our different realms of life and experience, we’re able to get to different parts of our community. Ali is in the arts industry and Emma’s involved in local schools and they’ve both lived here in Karori a few more years than I have, so they know small business owners around the shops. Emma started chatting to the Karori New World owner and he’s now a very big supporter of ours; he’s been on board since day one. Emma’s happy to just waltz into any of the shops and strike up the conversation whereas I’m not quite so eager to do that. They interact with the community in ways that I don’t and it’s made me think about other ways that we can get people involved. In fact, I didn’t even know that the Karori Arts and Crafts Center existed until our first working bee. Just using that space every week, loads of other people have heard about us and got interested in what we’re doing, and then we’ve tapped into their communities. That’s how word of mouth works I guess.
Why do you care about reducing plastic?
Part of it comes from my love of running in the outdoors, being out on the trails. I do some running events where you go through the Taraweras, and it’s so sad to be out in the middle of nowhere and see rubbish. Then I go to the supermarket the next day and every single thing I buy comes home in a plastic container or a plastic bag.
I know I don’t need to live that way. It’s quite a small change I can make and if we all do it, it is going to make an impact.
Personally I’ve probably declined 50–100 plastic bags in just the last couple of months — because typically you’d use 5–6 bags each time at the supermarket. That’s 500 years less of those 50–100 bags being in our environment.
Another aspect of it is health. I’ve learnt a lot about my own health over the last few years, and part of it is learning how much of an effect the environment has on us — both the natural environment as a whole and our closer, personal environment. A surprising side-effect of being more aware of plastic packaging is that I’ve lost weight. So go plastic-free and lose weight; it’s the new diet! It’s probably because I look at the packet of bread or any processed product on the shelf and think, do I really need that or do I just want it? Maybe instead I’ll have a hearty roast vege salad. So I’m eating healthier, less processed food because I’m conscious about my plastic waste.
What’s difficult about leading the charge on this issue?
People’s mentalities can be a big challenge. There’s a lot of people who like to hold someone or something accountable for the problem. The most common place to get a plastic bag is the supermarket, so there’s a lot of people who say it should be the supermarket’s responsibility. But then the checkout person says “my job is hard enough as it is! Why do I also have to be responsible for your use of plastic bags?” Then somebody else says, “why is the supermarket trying to change the way we shop?” There’s so many different ways of looking at it, but all we want to do is put out a free alternative to plastic bags. We just want to say, do you want a plastic bag, or do you want to take this bag to re-use?
Another challenge is the time and energy it takes to find out who’s doing what. Wellington’s made up of heaps of small communities, but how do we interlink them? Finding all these little community groups and building relationships…where do you start with that? How do you co-ordinate groups you don’t even know exist? It’s a huge word of mouth and community challenge.
When have you felt proud about what the team is achieving?
On Monday we had a meeting with the Mayor — he’s totally on board and he’s wanting supermarkets to be on board too. To have such a positive response from our city’s leader is pretty amazing. He was tweeting about it yesterday, and then his Personal Assistant tweeted and Wellington City Council tweeted, and it just snowballed and people were liking it and retweeting all day. My phone was going bonkers; everyone at work was looking at me and I had to put it onto ‘do not disturb’ because it just kept buzzing and buzzing! That was a special moment; I got some warm fuzzies.
If New Zealand became plastic-bag free, what would be next for you?
A really big bottle of wine! But afterwards I’d love to take on zero waste in New Zealand.
How can people support what you’re doing?
- Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for updates, information and events
- Come along to a sewing bee every Wednesday evening, 7pm at Karori Arts and Crafts Centre or less regular bees on Weekends at Aro Community Council. Follow us on social media for working bee updates.
- Get in touch to have bags at your shop/businesses by emailing jemma@boomerangbagsnz.org
- Come along to the launch! Check out our Pledgeme event page for tickets and to buy ‘bought to support’ bags.
- Buy bags or donate by emailing pip@boomerangbagsnz.org or getting in touch via Facebook
- Get involved in your local plastic-free community. Google ‘plastic free’ and your town name, or get in touch with us and we can link ya’ll up.
- Start your own group: check out boomerangbags.org to get your bag template and pocket logo set up, and then get in touch with us for more local support to hit the ground sprinting!
