The Cooinda Homeschool Group, which is made up of six local families, is currently working on a Boomerang Bags project which aims to provide local shoppers with a sustainable alternative to plastic bags.
The group delivered a Boomerang Box to the Burgess SUPA IGA store on Friday.
A parent from one of the families, Sarah Theakston, told The Cobar Weekly the Cooinda Homeschoolers felt they could help reduce the number of plastic bags that end up in landfill and also in the environment by initiating the Boomerang Bags project.
“Three of the Cooinda families visited a Recycling and Waste Management Centre earlier this year and learnt about the amount of rubbish that ends up in landfill every year.
“We learnt that estimates for the time it takes for plastic bags to decompose ranges from 20 to 1,000 years,” Mrs Theakston said.
“Plastic bags are recyclable but many are never recycled, especially in Cobar where there is no recycling available for household rubbish.”
Mrs Theakston said the Boomerang Bag project has been implemented in other parts of Australia and aims to provide a sustainable alternative to plastic bags.
“It involves placing reusable bags in a box near supermarket checkouts for people to use free of charge and then return,” she explained.
Boomerang Bags can be made by community members using recycled materials and provide a free, fun and sustainable alternative to plastic bags. The Cooinda Homeschool Group has made a Boomerang box to hold reusable bags and has received a donation of bags to get the project started.
“From this week shoppers at Burgess SUPA IGA will be able to opt to use an environmentally-friendly bag from the Boomerang box free of charge, and then return the bag at their leisure for others to re-use.
“Shoppers are welcome to place other clean reusable bags into the box if they have bags at home they no longer need,” she said.
“According to the Clean Up Australia Day website, an average of half a million shopping bags are collected every year on Clean Up Australia Day,” Mrs Theakston said.
One of the homeschool children, six year old Isla McKervey, is passionate about the damage that plastic bags can do to our environment.
“Plastic bags kill beautiful animals if they eat them,” Isla said.
“The Cooinda kids believe that if we can reduce the amount of plastic bags being used in Cobar by supplying free reusable bags, we can reduce the number of bags that end up in the environment and landfill,” Mrs Theakston said.
Plans are underway for another box to be placed in Khans SUPA IGA.
