Your Guide to Making a Submission
Are you sick of having to miss out on a coffee when you haven’t bought your own cup with you? Do you hate that awkward moment when you hand over your BYO takeaway container for kai and the person looks at you like you’re from another planet? At Takeaway Throwaways, we get annoyed at this too.
Are you sick of having to miss out on a coffee when you haven’t bought your own cup with you? Do you hate that awkward moment when you hand over your BYO takeaway container for kai and the person looks at you like you’re from another planet? At Takeaway Throwaways, we get annoyed at this too.
Takeaway Throwaways is a people’s campaign, calling on the Government to ban single use disposable food and drink service-ware containing plastic and mandate co-designed, accessible, and reusable alternatives instead. We know it’s a mouthful, but basically, we believe if the Government bans single-use service-ware items and implements systems that are accessible for the disability community and also mean we don’t always have to bring our own from home, life would be way better. Our country would be less polluted, our earth would be less pillaged of resources, and society would benefit too.
With this in mind, you can imagine how excited we were to hear the Government has recently proposed a ban on some single-use and hard-to-recycle plastics! You can read the Unofficial Summary here. In a nutshell, single-use plastic items such as bowls, cutlery, straws, stirrers, cups and lids, and sushi trays, will no longer exist if the ban comes into play. We may have to wait several years until the ban is a reality, but we’re at the beginning of positive change and it feels so good to be here.
This proposal was announced on the 12th of August, and it is now in the submission phase until the 4th of December. A submission phase means the Government is requesting our input on the proposal. ‘Our’ means you. Your mum. Your neighbour. Literally, anyone in Aotearoa New Zealand can give their feedback on the proposal and the Government NEED you to. They need to know we want this, and they need to know what changes and improvements they can make to the proposal in order for bans and reuse schemes to work.
The only problem is, the proposal is 74 pages (hence our helpful summary), and the submission includes answering 23 questions. We know you don’t have enough hours in your day (especially if you’re a student) to put lots of time into making a submission; that’s why we’ve created something easy peasy for you.
Read Takeaway Throwaways full submission answers here. Feel free to copy and paste our answers- though we highly recommend using them as a starting point for you to write your own.
Read a joint submission created by many groups within Aotearoa’s Zero Waste Community here. This will give you more inspiration for your own answers.
Quickest option: Although your submission will hold more weight if you write your own answers, Greenpeace has thoughtfully put together an option that takes just a moment to enter your details and hit submit. Find that here.
There a four pathways to help you with your submission! Following this, there is a question-by-question breakdown of Takeaway Throwaways’ full individual organisation submission! Depending on your time, your energy, your capacity, and your inclination to be involved, you can choose any one of these options to make your submission:
This is the time to use your democracy. The Government has given us a golden opportunity, and it’s up to us to say “YES PLEASE” to banning nasty single-use items in the name of respecting and protecting our planet!
P.S. If you haven’t already, sign our Takeaway Throwaways petition to support us too!
Follow Kate Hall on Instagram and check out her website for handy tips!