Bendigonians were no exception, sewing Boomerang Bags, ordering our lattes in keep cups, and battling waste in our homes and businesses.

Along the way, Victoria banned single-use plastic bags.

But when COVID-19 hit people resorted to takeaway, went back to disposable coffee cups, and often wore disposable face masks.

Despite this, efforts to stem the use of single-use plastic continue in the community.

Read more: New Bendigo recycling rules - What you need to know

Leanne James led Bendigo's Boomerang Bag movement, which began as a response to climate change and consumer culture from her and friend from her and friend Loretta Kingston-Brown.

Mrs James said the pair felt so weighed down by the issues, they needed to do something that would directly affect their community.

So they recruited people to sew bags to put in businesses around the city as a plastic-free option.

The group created almost 4500 reusable shopping bags between its establishment in 2017 and closure in early 2020.

Mrs James said from the start they were inundated with positive feedback.

"People really appreciated ... the fact that we were taking fabric that was destined for landfill and creating something lasting to take the place of single-use plastics," she said.

The importance of social connections to tacking a massive issue was Mrs James' biggest lesson from the project. She said Boomerang Bags allowed people to join in direct action, in a non confronting situation. They formed a strong group, where everyone felt welcome.

Read more: How these groups are saving food waste from landfill

"It just reminded us how incredibly important it is for everybody to take as many small steps as they possibly can," Mrs James said.

"[It highlighted] how we can find solutions and how single-use plastic is something that we can find workarounds for.

"There are solutions all over the place ... we just need people to adopt these small changes and habits."

Mrs James said it felt like COVID-19 had taken the limelight from single-use plastic reduction, which had previously been treated as urgent.

But momentum has continued in parts of Bendigo.

Children at Camp Hill Primary are well into the swing of a "nude food" movement, in which they aim to bring food to school without single-use plastic wrapping.

Every Mondays student sustainability monitors look through each class's lunchboxes, counting how many have brought nude food, and encouraging conversation about the issue.

Each week the class with the most nude food wins a Make a Difference Monday trophy.

Camp Hill sustainability coordinator Mary Thorpe said it was like the AFL grand final every week when the prize was awarded at assembly.

The nude food initiative has been running at the school for about 15 years, but has ramped up in the past two.

Ms Thorpe said it was part of a broader sustainability curriculum to prepare children for a world in which this would be the norm.

She's seen children embrace the initiative, thinking of their own ways to begin conversations about waste reduction with their classmates.

Read more: The change starts right here, right now

Ms Thorpe said the school's own war on waste was one of the best steps they had taken to kickstart change.

Students and staff collected litter from around the school to lay out on a tarpaulin. All together it was shocking.

"That was a huge motivator to change," Ms Thorpe said.

Fighting waste at Camp Hill has been a matter of just keeping going, because the message could slip down the radar so easily, she said.

Ms Thorpe said the nude food program had made a fundamental change to how the children treated their lunchbox waste. She said it had even driven behaviour change among adults, as school staff became more enthusiastic about the movement.

"It needs to be part of our constant dialogue. It's not something you can do as a one off," Ms Thorpe said.

"I'm amazed by the capacity of the kids that are the sustainability leaders, of how much their knowledge, their understanding, their expertise increases every year.

"I just expect that whatever field they go into ... that they will take that sustainability knowledge with them into that and help that industry to be more sustainable int heir practice."

For the Bendigo Sustainability Group, waste could even be its next big priority.

President Colin Lambie said the area was one option for the group, which was in the middle of a strategic planning process.

Mr Lambie said plastic water and soft drink bottles were the next big step for Australians to reduce their single-use plastic waste.

He said hopefully the state government would introduce a container deposit scheme, so more people recycled plastic.

Mr Lambie said the problem with plastic waste wasn't just to do with the resources it took to produce bags.

"It's not just a climate change, greenhouse gas problem, you only have to walk along beside a creek, or walk along by a beach here, and see the plastic," Mr Lambie said.

"When this stuff ends up in creeks and rivers and the ocean, and marine life suffers accordingly, that's not a good thing."

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