SYDNEY, July 1 (Xinhua) -- A ban on single-use plastic bags in Australia's Queensland state came into effect on Sunday, in the latest major effort to reduce the impact of the items on the country's environment.
"Queenslanders use close to one billion of these plastic shopping bags per year and about 16 million of these end up in our precious environment," the state's Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said in a statement on Sunday.
Under the ban, retailers will not be able to supply single-use, lightweight plastic bags less than 35 microns thick.
Queensland's marine features, including the Gold Coast Surfers Paradise beach resort region and the Great Barrier Reef coral system, make up some of Australia's top tourist attractions. But Palaszczuk pointed out that marine debris is a problem, with about 75 percent of it collected along the state's coastline plastic materials.
"Disturbingly, around 90 percent of all seabirds have ingested plastic debris as have 30 percent of turtles," she said.
"It's incredibly sad to see how this plastic waste endangers our marine wildlife, which often mistake plastic items particularly plastic shopping bags for their natural food."
Director of the Sea World Research and Rescue Foundation nonprofit marine research group Trevor Long said plastic pollution was proving to be a major environmental issue and the ban was a "great initiative."
"We see first-hand the effects of marine debris and plastics are having on marine wildlife with many injured birds, turtles and dolphins coming into our care with injuries due to human interaction such as fishing line and netting entanglements, swallowing plastic bags or being hooked," he said.
Queensland's plastic bag ban comes days after Victoria state announced a similar move to be rolled out next year. Supermarket chain Woolworths has also stopped providing single-use plastic bags from its stores nationwide, in a ban that is expected to remove more than 3.2 billion of the items from the environment every year, while rival Coles revealed plans last July to stop using disposable plastic bags this year.
