Portland’s plan to ban plastic bags from local grocery stores by 2011 breezed through City Council last week with hardly a peep. The only person who turned up to oppose the measure is local crank Terry Parker, who turns up at public meetings on an almost-weekly basis to dismiss environmentalism as socialism and bicycles as communist.
The lack of opposition is a shock, given how controversial banning the bag has been in our sister cities. San Francisco’s ban on plastic bags has had a mixed impact, since it has cut down on littler but increased use of paper bags with their higher environmental footprint. Seattle went ballistic on its 20-cent paper and plastic bag fee, repealing the fee last year. So why did things go so differently in Portland?
Environmental groups around the country who are pushing plastic bag bans could look to Portland as an example of how to turn political will against plastic bags rather smoothly. I talked with the Surfrider Foundation’s Pete Stauffer about how his coalition won in Portland.
1. Push for a bag ban that’s good for business. I wrote about the unusual alliance of business and environmentalists backing the bag ban and having heavyweights like Fred Meyer and the Northwest Grocery Association speaking up in favor of the ban made a huge political difference. Getting that kind of support meant working with business to draft the ban, which grocers liked because it passed along some of the cost of paper bags to shoppers and prioritized reusable bags. “One of we learned is that we we both want to see people using reusable bags,” says Stauffer. “Environmentalists want to see it because it’s better for the environment, but it also saves money for businesses.”
2. Shoot for a policy that’s not too extreme. Seattle’s fee on paper bags was 20 cents. Ours will be five cents, unless a statewide law in 2011 sets a different standard. It’s harder to scare people with a nickle.
3. Get lots of citizens behind the ban before it comes to a vote. Then get them to turn out to impress politicians. Mayor Adams pitched a plastic bag ban back in 2007 and it didn’t get anywhere, in part because there wasn’t a tsunami of public support. The Surfrider Foundation has spent the past three years gathering petitions and building a ban the bag army who make quite the impact when they filled every seat at city hall during the first Ban the Bag hearing.
I want to know what grocery stores’ cost is for the 10-cent reusable bags they’re selling so many of now. Also the energy requirements of making those bags.
And in 6-12 months, I want to know what the city’s estimate is of the number of times a “reusable” 10-cent bag is actually being reused … and how much money the grocery stores are making.
I don’t object to grocers making money on the bags if there’s a net benefit. But this MIGHT all be a way for us to pat ourselves on the back while making groceries more expensive and grocers more profits.
A quick Google search say that if you buy 1000 at a time, (complete with printing your logo on them and shipping,) you can get them for $0.71. Fred Meyer is currently selling them for $0.79 cents. I’m guessing that Fred Meyer probably buys more than 1000 at a time, and they probably buy from a cheaper manufacturer than one off the first page of Google. Of course there is some overhead in stocking/selling them, but it isn’t much more than the overhead in stocking/giving away paper ones. (I haven’t seen any 10 cent bags for sale, but I did get a free one that held 6 bottles of wine, by buying 6 bottles of wine.)
They are made from woven recycled plastic, I have a really hard time imagining that the energy used in production is very high.
As for how often they get used, with the exception of the wine one, I’ve probably used my 3, 100 times each in the last 2 years. One of them has a small hole in the corner, (not big enough for anything to fall out,) but true, they won’t be usable forever…