Compliant alternatives listed
Material categories tracked
Coverage across every state and territory
State plastic bans operate at the material level rather than the product level, and every state has its own list of restricted materials. A single takeaway container might contain three different materials, each subject to its own restrictions in different jurisdictions. The same product can be legal in one state and non-compliant in another.
For a hospitality business, an events operator, or a council procurement team, working that out manually is impractical. Even state government resources don't connect the dots cleanly between bans, materials, and the actual products on the market. Boomerang Alliance had spent years assembling the national picture through their Plastic Free Places work. What businesses needed was a way to actually use it, to ask a simple question and get a clear answer.
The compliance maze was real. The job was to give businesses a way through it.
Someone trying to procure compliant takeaway containers isn't looking to learn about materials or read regulation. They have a purchasing decision to make, often under time pressure, and what they need is a clear answer for the state they're operating in. The complexity that produces that answer is real. Products contain different materials, those materials are restricted differently across states, and compliance falls out of how all of that relates. None of it belonged in the user experience. The platform had to absorb the complexity and hand back something a business could act on.
The same logic applied to how the platform stayed current. Plastic bans aren't static. States add new materials over time, new products come to market, and the compliance picture shifts as both move. If Boomerang's team had to come back to us every time something changed, the platform would fall behind the work. It needed to be something they could maintain themselves, so the answers stayed accurate as the regulation kept moving.
The complexity had to be absorbed by the platform, not carried by the user. Businesses needed an answer they could act on, not a regulatory landscape to navigate.
The search starts with the user's situation. They tell the platform, the Ban Solution Finder, which state they're operating in and what kind of product they're trying to source, and from there the platform does the work of resolving the underlying material-level data into a clear answer. The user never sees the rules behind the result. They get a list of compliant alternatives that applies to their specific context, ready to act on.
The output had to be useful in the moment, not just accurate. A printable list lets purchasing managers walk results straight into a supplier conversation. The interface is built mobile-first, so it works wherever the procurement decision actually happens, whether that's at a desk, on a venue floor, or in the back of a stockroom. Each result carries enough product detail for a business to make a confident purchasing decision without needing to verify compliance again themselves.
The Ban Solution Finder was designed for Boomerang to run, not for us to maintain. As states pass new bans, as new products come to market, and as coverage expands into new jurisdictions, Boomerang's team can update everything through the CMS without development support. That was the only way the platform could remain accurate over time. Compliance is a moving target, and the people closest to the policy work needed to be the ones keeping the platform aligned with it.
Every product independently assessed and added to the database, giving businesses a substantive set of options to choose from
The Ban Solution Finder handles compliance at the level the regulation actually operates, resolving material-level bans into product-level answers
The Ban Solution Finder handles compliance data for all Australian jurisdictions
For the businesses using the Ban Solution Finder, what used to be hours of research, supplier calls, and guesswork is now a search that returns a clear answer they can act on. The compliance picture they get is current, because Boomerang keeps the database aligned with the regulation as it moves. That confidence is the point. The Ban Solution Finder operates with government funding from WA and SA, secured by Boomerang Alliance in recognition of the platform's role in supporting regulatory transition. The platform's coverage can extend to new states as more governments come on board, and Boomerang's national work continues to underpin every answer it returns.
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