You’ll be joining more than 1 million people from 130 countries who have made the pledge and ‘choose to refuse’ single-use plastic items such as water bottles, drinking straws, shopping bags, and coffee cups.

Steve Dewar, of the Toronto Area Sustainability Neighbourhood Group, said the month-long international campaign was a good way to focus attention on changes that many consumers and retailers had already started to make in Lake Macquarie.

“We feel we are making some headway in Lake Macquarie in trying to reduce plastic rubbish and detrimental effects of plastic in the food chain and our waterways,” Mr Dewar said.

“We are working with Lake Macquarie City Council and fishing shops to reduce fishing rubbish in the lake and encouraging council to install finer filters for small plastics on stormwater drains.

“We are starting to install swap bags or ‘boomerang bags’ in various shops. These are for when people forget their own bags, and would otherwise take a plastic bag.”

The group has also lobbied the state government to ban single-use plastic bags, and has run educational booths at local shopping centres to encourage people out of single-use plastic bags.

Having public bins in Toronto for recyclable materials had also had a major impact on changing, or extending, people’s habits, Mr Dewar said.

“People already recycle at home, so now they realise they should do it when they’re out, as well,” he said.

The group has also helped coffee shops in Toronto and Warners Bay to replace their plastic-lined coffee cups with recyclable cups, and takeaway cups that can be reused.

Some coffee shops, such as Essence Cafe, on The Boulevarde, in Toronto, even have female customers who come into the shop and produce their own coffee mug from their handbag, which they’ve brought from home.

“It’s become a trendy thing to do at the moment,” cafe owner Rebecca Walsh said.

Male customers were also showing their preparedness to reuse and recycle, she said, returning their takeaway coffee trays and four empty cups from the previous day, and ordering refills.

Ms Walsh said transitioning to recyclable cups was slightly more expensive for the cafe, but the cups were branded, and she was happy to make the change.

“We even recycle our coffee grounds. We put them on our garden and we eat the produce that we grow,” she said.

Cofee grounds were also known to boost the blues in hydrangeas, and were commonly recycled to make body scrubs, she said.

Mr Dewar said every little bit helped in reducing waste going into landfill.