Cafes and restaurants are being pushed away from plastic, with single use plastic bans coming into force across the country.

It can be an expensive transition, but there's support for businesses making the move towards greener alternatives.

Western Australia banned heavyweight plastic bags in 2022, Queensland will follow this September. South Australia and the ACT will act soon. The bans are forcing the major supermarkets to abandon their 15 or 25 cent plastic bags.

Australia urgently needs a national plan to tackle the soft plastics crisis and the Boomerang Alliance is releasing its proposed product stewardship scheme to mandate action by producers and supermarkets.

Dine-in restaurants in Australia should be banned from serving food and drink in disposable packaging.

Boomerang Alliance submitted a joint submission to House of Representatives Standing Committee Inquiry into the impacts of plastic pollution in Australia’s oceans and waterways with Total Environment Centre and AUSMAP.

• Download Boomerang Alliance submission to the Inquiry Into the Impacts of Plastic Pollution in Australia's Oceans and Waterways

The Total Environment Centre have published an OMNIPOLL survey that shows that 9 in 10 Australians support the inclusion of wine and spirit bottles in container refund schemes.

The collapse of the REDcycle soft plastics recycling scheme and "secret stockpiling" has revealed deeper problems that must be fixed if the community is to have confidence in plastics recycling.

Jeff Angel discussed the Container Deposit Scheme expansion and the REDcycle soft plastic recycling collapse with Melinda James from ABC Illawarra.

With NSW, the ACT, SA and Qld announcing proposed extension of the 10c refund schemes and more jurisdictions to follow – the Boomerang Alliance of 55 NGOs looks forward to hundreds of millions of more drink containers being recycled and an extra $150m each year into the pockets of households and charities in 2023.

The Boomerang Alliance and its allies are calling on the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments to step up action to phase-out polluting single-use plastics and stop greenwash at their 21 October meeting, the first since the election of the ALP government.