Illawarra Greens candidates are calling on major political parties to match their party's election commitment to phase out single-use plastics in the state by 2023.
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On Tuesday, candidates announced the Greens' Plan for a Plastic Free Sea which would also see the immediate ban of plastic bags, straws, polystyrene containers and microbeads if the party is elected to government on March 23.
Candidate for Keira Kaye Osborn said the "plastic tap" had to be turned off.
“Plastic pollution in our oceans is choking and killing marine life and contaminating the food chain," she said.
“It’s time NSW got behind the community driven war on waste and got on board with the global shift away from single-use plastics."
Candidate for Shellharbour Jamie Dixon said single-use plastic needed to be phased out because scientists estimated there would be more plastic than fish in the sea by 2050.
"This should be a key election issue but the major parties are ignoring the community and hoping the issue of plastics will go out with the tide,” he said.
Greens MP Justin Field said neither major political party was showing "any leadership when it comes to reducing the scourge of plastics in our marine environment" and he stands with the community in calling for strong action.
If elected, the party would also reduce plastic entering the environment by 90 per cent by 2020 through legislated targets.
It would also establish a NSW Waste Commissioner and require all packaging used in NSW to be recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2023. A Greens government would reinvest the $2.1 billion NSW Waste and Environment Levy into fixing our waste crisis.
The plan follows a decision last year by the European Union to phase out single-use plastics by 2021 and a recommendation from a Senate inquiry that federal and state governments work to phase out petroleum-based single-use plastics by 2023.
