It's been found at the deepest point of the ocean, it's been found in Arctic ice. It's been found in the air we breathe, the earth we tread and the water we drink. Even our beautiful slice of the Pacific is not immune to the plastic plague.

The Newcastle lifestyle is a simple one for many. Weekends are for walks, coffee with friends, brunching, a surf at Merewether. Acai bowls and big brekkies. Schooners and spritzers.

But there is no time to bury our heads in the sand - with one-third of all plastic ending up in the natural environment, Novocastrians and beachside businesses are tackling the plastic problem head on.

The Kiosk Newcastle Beach is on the "doorstep" of the Pacific Ocean and is making a big splash in an even bigger pond to do the right thing by their beloved patch of the environment.

"We're very fortunate to be where we are, right on the beach, so we have an obligation to be a bit of a leader," says Rob Faraday-Bensley, part-owner of The Kiosk.

"I'll walk down to the surf and if there's a kiosk coffee cup sitting in the sand, it is a very in-your-face example of the fact we're polluting our own environment."

And that coffee cup? It would be just one of the billion takeaway coffee cups purchased by Australians every year.

Most coffee cups can't be recycled because of their plastic lining. Even plastics that are recyclable rarely make it all the way through the process - only 9 per cent of the world's plastic has been successfully recycled.

"We hear these myths that it's coming from overseas and it's coming from countries that can't handle their waste. No. It's coming from us," says Maddison Carbery, PhD plastics researcher at the University of Newcastle.

"It makes you a bit frustrated and a bit angry when you see it here, when I know we could avoid our input of that plastic to the ocean."

Conscious of what the planet might look like as his five children grow up, Faraday-Bensley took action. For a week, he kept every takeaway coffee cup he drank and found 20 in his car.

"The problem is that big that it feels like it's almost too big, but everyone can implement change on a personal level," he says. "And now that's 20 coffee cups I don't use."

In picturesque locations where a single gust could blow a discarded straw straight into the water, or a can onto the sand, consumers and venues have an added responsibility to ensure litter isn't getting out into the ocean, Carbery says.

Yet somehow, 8 million tonnes of plastic waste is getting out there, every year. So much so that a World Wildlife Fund-commissioned University of Newcastle study suggests humans could be ingesting a credit-card per week in microplastics.

The Kiosk Newcastle Beach is adapting to increased concern for environmental sustainability, which is prevalent here in Newcastle.

They're one of 4736 cafes signed up to Australian organisation Responsible Cafes, who are focused on connecting conscious coffee-drinkers with sustainably-minded cafes through an online catalogue.

"Awareness has accelerated really quickly," says Luke Marshall, manager and part-owner of The Kiosk. He claims the kiosk, despite being takeaway-based, has gone from 50/50 dine-in/takeaway coffees to 85/15 in the past couple of years.

The kiosk features a "mug wall" out the front, a kind of mug exchange. Although most people bring keep cups for a 50-cent discount or choose dine-in, the mug wall is an opportunity to start important conversations, according to Marshall.

Admittedly, domestic litter like straws and cutlery make up a small percentage of ocean plastic, but Carbery says every single piece of plastic makes a difference.

"One straw can definitely make a difference. If you've seen that clip of the straw up the turtle's nose, well, that makes a big difference to lots of turtles."

A big difference indeed, considering Australian waters are home to six sea turtle species, all of which are listed as vulnerable or endangered.

Beach-front cafes are making changes in an effort to save the marine environment by transitioning to bio-cups, bio-cutlery and cardboard straws. They are designed to break down and decompose, unlike plastic. However, what isn't advertised, is that the conditions needed for this process to take place are very specific.

If you put a biodegradable cup in the bin, you put it in landfill. The heat and aeration needed to decompose these products can only be found in a "lab" or in specific facilities, and generally not at the tip or in the natural environment, according to Carbery.

In every instance there is a benefit ... and so in not making as much money, there's actually a benefit which is, at a bigger picture level, much more important,Luckily, other organisations are ahead of the game. The Green Helping Hand is a company putting their title into action at The Kiosk. They pick up compostable trash, including special takeaway cups, bio-cups and cutlery that can be returned by patrons, and compost them to make usable soil. Cups come with little symbols to tell you how to dispose of it properly, and the code AS4736 means a product is commercially compostable.

It's a service with a weekly fee, and regular takeaway cups are "probably half the price" of the compostable cups used at the kiosk.

It's a cost they are willing to front.

"In every instance there is a benefit ... and so in not making as much money, there's actually a benefit which is, at a bigger picture level, much more important," Faraday-Bensley says.

And for a small business, they have a surprising amount of swing on the larger corporations.

Faraday-Bensley says suppliers are being pushed by customers and competitors in the market who want to maintain their specialty contracts, and that's forced them to come to the table.

"We have had some fairly straight-forward conversations with some of our suppliers where they've said, 'Look, these are the products we've got at the moment and we're working on this, this and this but it's not ready yet', and we've pushed them and said, 'Well that's not good enough'."

Even in our little lives, we can help bring businesses to the table. Co-founder of Earth Guardians Newcastle, Ruby Maughan, says sustainable options at cafes are a selling point.

Maughan began Earth Guardians Newcastle at the age of 16, and the group runs year-round beach clean-ups. Among their haul after an hour's work at Bar Beach on a warm afternoon were cigarette butts, sugar packets, plastic cutlery, plastic packaging, straws and wet wipes.

This isn't surprising, considering plastic packaging comprises 62 per cent of all trash collected at beach clean-ups around the world.

"We've been doing this for four years now and it's not getting that much better ... we're still finding this amount of stuff," Maughan says, gesturing at the hessian sacks full of trash sprawled on the grass around her.

"Cleaning up rubbish isn't something people really want to get out of the house for but it's a good opportunity to get involved."

Communities have come together over the common goal of clean seas. STRAWkling is one such program that took place in another of Australia's lifestyle capitals, Manly. Run by Operation Straw in the summer of 2018, attendees dived below the surface and snorkelled for trash. In just 12 sessions in a six-kilometre square patch of Manly Cove, they recovered more than 2000 plastic straws.

With many cafes now offering alternatives to plastic straws, such as paper or metal straws, it's a baffling statistic.

Then again, every piece of plastic ever manufactured is still on Earth. Its legacy will outlive us.

Extraordinarily, worldwide plastic production continues to increase at an alarming rate - by 50 million tonnes per year, Carbery says. In her research, she was alarmed to discover plastic has overtaken timber and steel production.

One of The Kiosk Newcastle Beach's latest technological changes was a $15,000 investment in a milk system which holds 10-litre sacks.

They've already noticed a decrease in recycling waste, and with a summer's day milk toll of 70 to 80 two-litre cartons, it's no wonder.

So there really is plenty of plastic in the sea - and it is clear that we need to make changes. But for those of you who don't want to imagine a life without beachside coffee, fear not. Marshall, Faraday-Bensley and Maughan have some simple advice for being a better bruncher and a more conscious caffeine-lover.

Listen to the science. Say no to a straw. Put trash in the right bin. Don't get a takeaway cup. Sit down, slow down and sip.

Don't bury your head in the sand. And if you do - look for some rubbish to pick up while you're down there.

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