Whitehorse City Council is committed to reducing waste generated at events, in particular single-use plastics.
We have developed the Planning A Plastic Free Event Guidelines ( PDF 9.65MB) to help event planners in Whitehorse to plan a plastic free event. This guide supports event organisers and vendors to avoid single-use plastics and encourage the use of reusable alternatives. Single-use plastics include items such as plates, bowls, cups, straws, cutlery, bags, bottled water, condiment sachets and containers, cling wrap and soft plastic food packaging.
Why are single-use plastics a problem?
Single-use plastics are a major problem because they:
- Are wasteful, unnecessary and used only for a short period of time
- Only 13% of single-use plastic is recycled, which means 87% is sent to landfill or ends up as litter, and the materials and resources are lost (National Plastics Plan, 2021)
- Many single-use plastic items are difficult and economically unviable to recycle due to their shape, size and plastic-type (DELWP, 2021)
- Approximately 130,000 tonnes of plastic enters our waterways and leaks into the marine environment each year in Australia (National Plastics Plan, 2021).
Why is it important to reduce them?
By eliminating single-use plastics from events you can:
- Reduce waste to landfill
- Reduce the demand for these products
- Reduce litter and its impact on wildlife, waterways and public amenity
- Increase awareness about the impacts that single-use plastics have on our community and the environment.
Resources to Become a Event Waste Wise
10 easy steps to host waste wise events
We’ve summarised 10 top tips to help you create a waste wise event:
- Advertise and promote the event as plastic-free to vendors, stallholders and event patrons, including promotion of why avoiding single-use plastics is important.
- Comply with the Victorian Government single-use plastic ban
- Partner up with a company that offers a reusable model that stallholders, vendors and participants can easily and readily use.
- Encourage patrons to bring their own water bottles, coffee cups, containers, cutlery and plates etc.
- Ensure all vendors supply only reusables or 100 per cent compostable foodware (eg. plates, cups, utensils, containers) that meets the compostable Australian Standards, and support this with a separate compostable waste stream. Please note that not all commercial composting facilities accept compostable products.
- Provide a water station or water refill points on site so patrons can refill bottles.
- Provide easy to access bin stations, which include recycling, food organics, compostable packaging (where applicable) and garbage. Consider a separate cardboard collection cage for vendors.
- Ensure bins have clear, simple signage including images. Where possible, provide bin monitors or bin ‘fairies’ at each station to educate patrons on how to separate waste correctly and monitor bins on the day.
- Ban the use and distribution of single-use plastic bags, balloons, glitter or other plastic single-use decorations.
- Arrange for your waste contractor to transport collected materials to appropriate facilities and provide you with waste data.
Going Reusable
As the event organiser you can help facilitate and promote a reusable system by:
- Partnering up with reusable cups and food ware company. There are companies that offer this service, including but not limited to Green My Plate, B-Alternative or Party Kit Network. Alternatively, the event can invest in their own reusables.
- To increase uptake and transition from single-use plastics, offer the reusable model to vendors free of charge. The reusable cost could be covered in many ways, including but not limited to the ticket or venue hire fee.
- Offering an onsite or kitchen space to manage and wash reusables and return to vendors.
- Provide a condiments station stocked with refillable sauces, dressings, salt and pepper etc.
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