In November 2021, a bill finally passed into law to explicitly legally ban single use plastics throughout NSW.

Underway now, Plastic Free July aims to take things a step further, encouraging residents to live life plastic free as much as possible. Now a global not for profit movement, the Plastic Free Foundation was started by Australian woman, Rebecca Prince-Ruiz in 2017. The movement claim to have globally helped reduce a worldwide tally of 2.1 billion tonnes of waste and recycling including 300 million kilograms of plastic consumption since inception and have stopped around 300 million kgs of plastic polluting the world each year.

Narromine Shire Council has come on board with Plastic Free July as part of an ongoing commitment to reduce plastic waste and protect the environment, and have called on the local community to register for the personal challenge.

The personal challenge involves either pledging to avoid single-use plastic packaging, target the takeaway items that could end up in the ocean or go completely plastic free for an agreed length of time.

A Narromine Shire Council spokesperson said they had teamed up with Dubbo Regional Council and Mid-Western Council to promote awareness of the environmental advantages of going plastic free.

"The awareness campaign is being promoted through social media," the spokesperson said. "Although single use plastic has been phased out, there is still a lot than can be done so we were happy to come on board and promote the campaign. We are proactive when it comes to waste management."

In 2022, Narromine Council, along with Dubbo Regional Council (DRC) and Mid-Western Regional Council were successful in receiving a NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) grant of $30,000 to participate in a community education program to help residents get the best out of the Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) kerbside collection service.

The FOGO was a new concept, providing a service which allows food to be added to the green lid organics bin, so it can be professionally recycled into compost.

Australians waste about 7.6 million tonnes of food every year, equivalent to around 312 kilograms per person. This waste costs the economy around $36.6 billion annually and accounts for about three per cent of Australia's annual greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2022, Mayor of Dubbo Regional Council, Mathew Dickerson, said the funding will help keep food and garden organics out of landfill. The aim of the uniquely named "Scrap Together" campaign is to increase the proportion of food waste put into the FOGO bin, rather than the red-lidded general waste bin where it ends up in landfill.

Head of EPA Organics, Amanda Kane, said the NSW Government had allocated an additional $69 million over the next five years to further expand FOGO services and support councils to meet new requirements under the Government’s Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy 2041 to provide services to all NSW households by 2030.

While a disposable plastic free environment seems a long way off, every step is to the advantage for our environment and a small, individual pledge in Plastic Free July can make a huge difference.