They are on board the nationwide campaign to cut out plastic in July. 

Pupils in grade five and six have pledged to give up single use plastic bags and straws throughout the month and will continue thinking creatively to live sustainably. 

Milla has created a strong reusable bag by fusing together single use bags, Kitty monitors rubbish in the yard and reports back to the school and Kip is using a reusable bamboo instead of plastic straw. 

St Columba’s Primary School sustainability leader Erica Hare said the entire school had embraced the reuse, reduce, recycle, respect concept. 

“Why use something once and then throw it away when it is going to last forever?,” she said. 

“It can be as simple as buying a big pack of chips and putting them in containers for lunch rather than buying individually wrapped packets. We have turned shirts into reusable shopping bags, plastic bags into pencil cases and icy pole sticks into bird feeders.” 

More than 20 million tonnes of waste is sent to Australian landfills every year. 

That’s why No Waste Ballarat member Nicole Elliott is working to get Ballarat businesses on board the Plastic Free July campaign by ditching plastic straws. 

“Ballarat has potential to start driving the change. We are a big regional city, if we get everyone on board to reduce plastic it can push habits out into smaller communities and influence bigger cities like Melbourne,” she said.  

You too can help drive the change. Ms Elliot said the first step could be daunting, but it was about creating sustainable habits.

Plastic Free July recommends using an eco-friendly coffee cups, avoid plastic packed products, bring reuseable bags to do your grocery shopping, bulk buy or get re-fills where possible, and use beeswax wraps, or a reusable container, instead of gladwrap. 

Visit plasticfreejuly.org/ for more.