The amount of plastic bags given out by retailers has dropped by 80 per cent.

Here is a broader example.

Imagine the plastic wrapping that surrounds the headsets and blankets on plane flights being replaced.

Instead, the blankets and headsets would be contained in bags made from the fabric from two tonnes of scrapped airline uniforms each month.

It is coming. Soon.

Green business is flowering and innovative ideas are being taken up as shoppers have adjusted to taking their own bags to their supermarket.

Kitchen and backyard composting is back with a vengeance.

As Mal Meninga said when the ban was announced in June 2018: “It may be an inconvenience for some, but over time if you make it part of your daily routine, we can help to save the environment.”

National Retailers Association policy manager David Stout said Queensland shoppers adjusted quickly after a few weeks of “wrath”.

“We would have now seen an 80 per cent plus reduction in plastic bags,” Mr Stout said.

“From a policy point of view, that’s pretty successful.”

The smaller plastic “barrier” bags – used to bag fruit, meat and fish – will remain in supermarkets for health reasons, he said.

However, shoppers are now looking for far more innovative ways to reduce the amount of plastic we use.

Tania Potts is one half of the dynamic Burleigh duo – with business partner Jordyn de Boer – that has grown an idea in 2013 of making fabric bags to reduce the amount of plastic bags in the ocean to countries.

That idea among a group of friends more than five years ago became Boomerang Bags.

The not-for-profit has built more than 860 "communities" – friendship groups or societies – making fabric bags in 20 countries.

Their website says those 860 communities have now sewn 205,603 fabric bags, used every day at shops, supermarkets and markets.

They estimate they have diverted 62,000 kilograms of material from going to landfill.

Ms Potts said there was no doubt Queenslanders reacted positively after the plastic bag ban.

“We had an incredible response to having more communities starting and sewing fabric bags,” Ms Potts said.

“It is exponential growth,” the former pilot said.

“I think we almost got 1000 communities now and at the beginning of last year we had 400 or 500.

“So we have almost doubled in the last year.

“There are now around 10 Boomerang Bag communities in Brisbane. It was a bit slow but now it’s taking off.

“The best thing about the plastic bag ban is the awareness of plastic pollution. I mean, everyone knows about it now.”

As well as developing “communities” around Queensland, interstate and internationally, Boomerang Bags has an online sales network.

Here, the not-for-profit sells environmentally sustainable products, including jute shopping bags.

Boomerang Bags now provide bags for conferences; first for sustainable development conferences, but more recently for more mainstream businesses.

“Initially we were getting sustainable business conferences, not-for-profit conferences,” she said.

“Now we are getting medical conferences where they are choosing not to get bags made from overseas but they are choosing to find an ethically made, morally conscious bag.

Boomerang Bags’ airline blanket idea is "not quite public", she said.

“An airline, an Australian airline, throws out two tonnes of uniforms a month,” she said.

“They have sent us the uniforms and asked us ‘Can you repurpose these uniforms for the bags for the airline headsets and the blankets?' ” she said.

“So we have just done the prototype. That is how far we are going now into business and corporations.

“They are prepared to put money into finding alternatives to putting plastic into landfill.”

Tracey Bailey was working in public relations in 2002 when she decided to change her focus.

She now operates four eco-friendly Biome stores in Brisbane.

Biome stores' products include cotton/jute replacements to the plastic shopping bags, portable kitchen compost units, washable fruit and vegie “swags” and stainless-steel drink containers.

She said the plastic bag ban made people rethink their kitchen habits.

“It really opened people’s minds to how they deal with the waste at home,” she said.

“For me, that has been an unexpected but a really beneficial outcome that was not specifically related to banning the bags.”

Ms Bailey said banning the plastic bags prompted a big question from her customers.

“The number one question they had was ‘What am I going to do with my rubbish now that I don’t have plastic bags now to put it in?' "

Composting is the answer. It's a real back-to-the-future boom, she suggests.

One of the best-selling items at her Biome stores is a small Bokashi kitchen compost kit.

It takes dairy, citrus, fish, bread rice and pasta fruit and vegetable scraps, eggs and egg shells, cooked and uncooked meat among other scraps and turns it to compost.

“It ferments your food scraps and begins the decomposition process,” she said.

“It doesn’t smell and you can use it as your bin.”

After that the composted waste is buried in your backyard garden.

“We have really noticed an increase in sales of the Bokashi bins. In fact, everything to do with composting,” she said.