Jordyn de Boer

Former ‘checkout chick’ Jordyn de Boer co-founded Boomerang Bags, a global movement that sees communities mobilised in tackling unmitigated environmental risk, single use plastic bags. And she is only just getting started.

From humble beginnings in Burleigh Heads, within just 12 months of being set up, Boomerang Bags was operating in 10 locations around Australia. Today, almost a decade on, there are more than 1,000 Boomerang Bags communities around the world.

Boomerang Bags volunteers have made over half a million recycled shopping bags—successfully diverting more than 180 tonnes of single use plastic from landfill.

Jordyn’s Bachelor of Environmental Science majoring in Wildlife Management and Conservation Biology at Griffith University and the years that followed were instrumental.

“The subjects around ecology and marine biology—where we had an opportunity to learn the intricacies of plants, animals, natural environments and ecosystems—changed the way I viewed the world,” Jordyn said.

Upon graduating, Jordyn went into an environmental science consultancy role, but she ended up getting a little frustrated. “I wasn’t able to make the change that I wanted to make,” she said. This led to a volunteer position with the Surfrider Foundation. The foundation does a lot of beach clean-ups, which Jordyn found incredibly motivating.

“When you’re on the ground collecting and sorting through rubbish from the coastline, you go, ‘Wow, this is huge,’ ” she said.

“Beach clean-ups are great but it occurred to me that they’re only a band aid to a much more complex problem. Understanding the science behind the fact that plastic doesn’t break down, I felt motivated to do something which would reduce plastic at its source.”

Jordyn was as a research assistant at Griffith’s School of Environment and Centre for Coastal Management when she and friend, Tania Potts came up with a solution to a problem that had been bugging her for a while.

Jordyn and Tania enlisted a group of passionate volunteers, who importantly could sew, and put the call out for donations of preloved fabric, which was met by the “truckload“.

Community sewing bees ensued and the volunteers in their hundreds made thousands of durable, sustainable and reusable shopping bags. These bags were made readily available, free of charge at the local shopping precincts in Jordyn’s hometown of Burleigh Heads. Boomerang Bags was born.

After nearly 10 years of adoption by volunteers the world over, Boomerang Bags is now almost entirely self-sustaining thanks to an online toolkit Jordyn and Tania set up. The toolkit seamlessly allows anyone interested to start a Boomerang Bags community wherever they live.

“We learnt so many things along the way and we figured, rather than people reinventing the wheel, we could offer them our resources so that the job of setting up a project like this is a lot easier,” Jordyn said.

“The beauty of Boomerang Bags and what I learned was how important it is to empower people at an individual and community level to be able to make change,” she said.

“Change needs to come from all levels but when people feel like they can do something, they’re more likely to act.”

Another unexpected but happy outcome from Boomerang Bags was the sense of belonging fostered among the volunteers. “The initial drive was to reduce plastic but actually the real impact of the project, I believe, has been about connection,” Jordyn said. “It’s allowed a lot of people, women in particular (but not exclusively) to find their tribe and a sense of purpose and belonging,” she said.

Jordyn now finds herself increasingly immersed in ‘regenerative’ farming in northern New South Wales. Regenerative farming or regenerative agriculture refers to any form of farming that simultaneously aims to produce food or fibres while improving the environment. Typically, there’s a big focus on good soil health.

She also works with Local Futures, an international non-profit that aims to renew ecological and social wellbeing by strengthening communities and local economies.

“Growing food, and small-scale local farming is a really big piece of the puzzle, in terms of the global crises we are currently facing,” Jordyn explained. “Nuts grown in Australia for example, are flown to China to be cracked open before being flown back again.

“By localizing our food systems, we can minimise and sequester carbon, regenerate soil and ecosystems, create jobs and empower communities.”