'Scene from Utopia'

By the NSW government's reckoning, the state uses 2 billion plastic bags annually, with "more than 10 million bags permanently" entering the environment, according to notes prepared for Mr Speakman before the policy's demise, and seen by Fairfax Media.

Environmental groups, such as the Boomerang Alliance, say the real figure is more like 3 billion bags out of a national total of at least 9 billion.

Taking a 2 per cent estimate of bags ending up as rubbish either from being wind-blown or being deliberately dropped, the annual litter total nudges 60 million, says Jeff Angel, the alliance's director.

While the bag ban had yet to receive cabinet endorsement at the time of the greyhound backflip, "it was the next cab off the rank", one person familiar with the decision said. Mr Baird had been "on board" with the ban to that point.

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The decision by Tasmania's Liberal Premier Will Hodgman to ban lightweight bags in 2013 gave "comfort" to party counterparts in NSW, another insider said.

Staff in the office of Mr Speakman – who is described by one former insider as still a passionate supporter of the phase-out – even resorted to online searches of synonyms for "ban" to skirt the then-premier's block.

"It was like a scene from Utopia," another ex-staffer said, referring to the ABC comedy series about the quirks of bureaucracy.

Despite the setback and a change of leader to Gladys Berejiklian in early 2017, the new Environment Minister Ms Upton sought to revive the policy within months, only to be rebuffed by a Premier opposed to market interventions. Ms Upton's staff were described as "quite ropeable".

"What's the political problem?" Mr Angel says. "It's an ideological one inside the Premier's office."

'Heavy hand'

Mr Angel points to the popularity of taking action. A survey for the alliance and the Total Environment Centre last November of 402 West Australian residents found 84 per cent back a bag ban, with only 7 per cent opposed.

Mr Stokes and Mr Speakman declined to comment. A spokesman for Ms Upton said she "wholeheartedly supports the NSW government policy".

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"As the Premier said [last week]: 'We don't think the heavy hand of government should come out unless we need to. People are doing it anyway.' "

Supermarket giants are finally moving – a quarter of a century after Denmark led the world by introducing a bag tax.

India's biggest city, Mumbai, last week introduced a ban on single-use plastic bags, cups and bottles.  Even so, as many as 1 trillion bags globally will be made this year, including 380 million in the US.

Woolworths stopped providing single-use plastic bags in Australia on June 20 – it hands out 3.2 billion a year – although a consumer backlash forced it to offer free recyclable bags for a limited time. Coles will follow suit with a bag ban from today, with its annual tally exceeding 2 billion. They have been joined by IGA.

Aldi has never given out plastic bags since opening outlets in Australia in 2001 and Harris Farms offers consumers alternatives, such as paper bags or boxes.

Strong consumer message

But while the big retailers' actions go a long way towards curbing plastic waste, it still leaves about 1 billion bags being handed out each year in NSW. About 20 million bags will end up as litter, Mr Angel said.

Confidence the market can be relied upon to solve the issue is at odds with the rest of Australia, and the views of senior NSW officials who had glimpsed an opportunity to lead national efforts to curb plastic waste.

Jon Dee, an anti-plastics campaigner and co-founder of DoSomething, said he had four meetings with Mr Stokes in 2014 not long after he became environment minister.

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Mr Stokes and his team "were really keen", Mr Dee said, with one extended meeting solely on plastic bags. "It was one of the best meetings I've had with anyone."

His successor, Mr Speakman, picked up the baton the following year. At the Australian Environment Ministers meeting in December 2015, he pushed for NSW to lead the push against plastic.

"There was general agreement that the environmental impacts of plastic bags must be tackled, and the impacts on the marine environment in particular [are] very serious," according to the briefing notes prepared for Mr Speakman.

A person familiar with Mr Speakman's views said: "Mark certainly pursued [a ban] with as much as vigour as Minister Stokes ... as much as one possibly could."

'Bushfire of policy outcomes'

Steve Beaman, then EPA's director of waste management, made his frustrations known to a closed-door gathering of industry figures in June 2017.

"All ministers are keen for it. They see the community expectation," he said, according to a recording obtained by ABC's Four Corners. "So we've done a lot of work last year on it and then the greyhound ban – a sort of bushfire of policy outcomes went through government and there was a ban on bans."

One guide to consumer sentiment is the mushrooming success of campaigns such as Plastic Free July. Begun with a few workmates in 2011, the Perth-based effort to minimise plastics signed up 2 million supporters – half of them Australians – across 159 countries in 2017.

Berejiklian government insiders recognise being the last state without a bag ban leaves it unnecessarily open to criticism.

"NSW is the recalcitrant state when it comes to banning plastic bags," Penny Sharpe, Labor's environment spokeswoman said, noting, "Governments around the world are taking action, communities are demanding bans and businesses are making the change".

"If elected in 2019, Labor will ban single-use plastic bags and do a broader review into how NSW can address plastic pollution," she said.

Justin Field, the Greens oceans spokesman said the campaign must go further. "The conversation has moved to reducing wasteful consumption generally, and eliminating a range of single-use plastics like straws, coffee cups, takeaway containers and bottled water."

The momentum against waste is likely to build, as awareness of the impact of plastics grows – such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch containing a gyre of plastics almost as big as Queensland.

One of the recommendations of the Senate inquiry into waste and recycling, which released its final report last week, was for all federal, state and territory governments to "phase out of petroleum-based single-use plastics by 2023".

Angst within NSW government circles also includes worries its other waste policies – such as leading the phase-out of microbeads, and the stunning success of the container deposit scheme – won't get the credit they deserve.

The container scheme was "a far more significant and difficult reform", one source said, noting the industry's opposition.

Indeed, a remarkable tally of about 450 million containers have been deposited in 633 collection points since the scheme was launched last December, the government says.

"It's real negative ... undermining the container deposit scheme,"  a former staffer says. "There's really no good reason [plastic bags] aren't banned."