By Sahar Foladi
A small local café in Dandenong had to change some of their products to stay in line with the plastic ban law, like many other businesses.
The state-wide ban was effective from 1 February and includes straws, cutlery, stirrers and cotton buds.
Joy Kinczel has owns the Justice Specialty Coffee café for over four years now. She was always passionate and aware to use eco-friendly quality products for her café which is why the new law didn’t hit her too hard.
“The majority is compliant already. We only really had cutlery and straws to swap over so it’s not too bad for us,” Ms Kinczel said.
She has swapped the plastic straws to bamboo material. Overall, Ms Kinczel said it costs more to be compliant with the new law.
“I went to by wooden spoons and a pack of 80 was $5.50 and normally you can get a pack of 100 for $1 something so it’s a big difference.”
Although Ms Kinczel feels for consumers with increased cost of living she said she’ll also have to increase her prices to cover costs.
“I think we will factor that the costs in our next price increase. Around the middle of the year we do a revision and we increase prices according to costs of good.
So base off that we’ll consider just a little bit extra it wouldn’t be too much because we feel it’s too hard on the consumer already,” Ms Kinczel said.
