Greening Austin Daily

Plastic Bag Ban to be Voted on at August 4th Meeting

25th July, 2011 - Posted by katherine - 1 Comment

Front page news today in the Statesman was about the Mayor’s efforts to ban plastic bags in retail stores in Austin.  On August 4th, city council will vote on a resolution that would direct city staff to come up with a proposal for phasing out the bags. That proposal would be done sometime in November, if the August 4th initiative passes.  Here’s an excerpt:

Leffingwell said Sunday that plastic bags pollute waterways, harm wildlife, clog drainage systems and take up landfill space, where they don’t biodegrade. A January report from the city’s Solid Waste Services Department said Austinites use 263 million plastic bags a year, and the bags cost the city $850,000 a year to put in landfills and to clean up as litter.

“I think there will be a cost benefit and a benefit to the environment of going down this road and coming up with a reasonable ordinance” that bans the bags, Leffingwell said.

To stave off a possible ban in 2008, six large retailers agreed to try to voluntarily reduce the use of plastic bags, but that program hasn’t been effective enough, Leffingwell said.

The City Council will vote Aug. 4 on a resolution from Leffingwell and Council Members Mike Martinez and Chris Riley that would direct staff members to propose a scope for the ban and a timetable for phasing it in. Staff members would have to present a plan to the council in November.

City staffers will work with retailers and other stakeholders to write that plan, the mayor said.

Details such as whether small retailers should be exempt, what penalties retailers could face for not complying and when the ban should take effect will be worked out over the next four months, he said.

“I’m sure many retailers have a lot of plastic bags on hand or (long-term) contracts with bag companies. We want to take those things into consideration,” Leffingwell said. “Our goal will be to develop a reasonable ordinance that doesn’t cause hardship. It would be a hardship to enact a ban immediately.”

Leffingwell said he thinks paper bags should still be an option at checkout counters because they’re included in Austin’s curbside collection program for recyclables and they don’t gum up recycling machinery as plastic bags do.

But he said retailers may want or need to charge a fee of a few cents per paper bag to compel customers to get in the habit of bringing canvas or reusable bags.

The mayor said he would prefer that compostable plastic bags not be allowed because they can be tough to distinguish from other plastic bags, which might make a ban difficult to enforce.

Leffingwell said he expects there will be exceptions to the ban, such as allowing grocery stores to put fish and meat products in plastic bags at checkout counters.

Only a handful of other U.S. cities have enacted bans on plastic bags, including Brownsville , San Francisco and Portland, Ore., which passed a ban last week .

Exciting news from our Mayor! Check out the whole article for more info.