Plastic bag ban starts on Wednesday in all Coles supermarkets in the ACT

The ACT trial has been supported by Clean Up Australia chair Pip Kiernan, who hopes the ban is extended nationwide.

"We'd love to see the entire retail sector fully embracing reusables," she said.

Coles is removing single-use plastic fresh produce bags, also known as barrier bags, from all 12 of its Canberra supermarkets from Wednesday for an indefinite trial which will encourage customers to bring in reusable options for their fruit and veg.

In the lead-up to the trial, Coles has been handing out reusable mesh fresh produce bags - made with 90 per cent recycled materials - to customers who spend $5 or more on fruit and veg.

But from Wednesday, customers have to bring or buy their own reusable bags. At Coles, they cost $3 for three bags.

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Clean Up Australia chair Pip Kiernan would like to see the ban extended nationwide.

"Absolutely! We'd love to see the entire retail sector fully embracing reusables," she said.

"We know that community desire for change is enormous - we're seeing a real drive amongst the Australian population to take action and reduce their environmental impact.

"Last year we surveyed 9000 of our Clean Up Australia volunteers and 95 per cent of them were strongly supportive of the phasing out of problematic, single-use plastics.

"But importantly, we know that people expect businesses to show leadership and be true stewards for the future, and it's heartening to see Coles making impactful changes."

The ACT government says the plastic produce bags are a problem because they can't be recycled through the ACT household recycling bin and often contaminate the recycling stream. Plastic barrier bags can only be disposed of to landfill or through designated drop off points at supermarkets.

The government plans to phase out single-use plastic bags when the ACT's new industrial composting facility commences operations.

Ms Kiernan said Clean Up Australia's preference was "always to firstly reduce and reuse rather than recycle".

"We want to normalise and encourage reusable options that can be used hundreds of times. That's genuine circular economy action, that saves resources and eliminates plastic pollution," she said.

"The problem with plastic is it can take hundreds of years to break down. Even then, it never disappears completely but it stays around as tiny microplastics."

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