IT HAS BEEN four years since Mayor Sam Adams brought up the idea of a citywide plastic bag ban. Come Saturday, October 15, a city council resolution will
finally cement the long-awaited plan.
“I think everyone’s been thinking, ‘Come on, get on with it!’ for some time now,” says Lisa Libby, the mayor’s planning and sustainability director. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise. People are on board.”
The ban targets grocery stores and general merchandise stores that gross more than $2 million annually. Wrapping up major corporations like Target and Walgreens, the ban’s breadth is wide. [“Plastic Problems” News, July 22, 2010]
But the city isn’t stopping there.
“We’re really trying to move the discussion from banning the bag to bringing your own bag,” Libby says.
To drive home the point, the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability launched bringyourbagpdx.com to act as a guide during the upcoming transition. The website also includes a form for low-income shoppers to fill out so they can receive a free reusable bag.
While many cities, such as Austin and San Francisco, endured heavy lobbying from the American Chemistry Council—the nation’s leading plastic bag proponent—Portland’s effort has remained surprisingly unnoticed. But Keith Christman, director of the American Chemistry Council’s “plastics division,” has publicly called the ban misguided, labeling it as a threat toward the recycling industry.
A bill banning plastic bags across Oregon was shut down in the Oregon Legislature’s last session, thanks in large part to heavy lobbying from the American Chemistry Council, and plastics manufacturer Hilex Poly. But, it could come back to life in the Senate next year. State Senators Mark Hass and Jackie Dingfelder are behind the bill, along with advocacy group Oregon Surfrider Foundation and other environmental activists.
Surfrider’s Staj Pace says that while achieving the Portland ban is a great success, the fight’s not over.
“We won’t just walk away now,” Pace says. “The more towns we can get to ban the bag, the closer we get toward a statewide ban.”
Pace says that an all-Oregon ban would ultimately be easier for grocery infrastructure—an idea that Northwest Grocery Association President Joe Gilliam has advocated. With an overarching ban, chain stores could simply cut out plastic bag shipments, rather than differentiate between bag-carrying stores and bag-banned stores.
Libby echoes Surfrider’s ultimate goal. “When we first brought up the idea of a city ban, there was a sense that statewide action was preferred,” she says. “We’re hoping that this will be the catalyst.”‘
Doing away with plastic bags is all fine ‘n good. But it really would be awesome if all the grocery stores replaced their plastic bags with paper bags THAT HAVE HANDLES. Fred Meyers on SE Hawthorne provides paper bags with handles. But for some gosh darn reason, most stores don’t – including most other FM locations.
What is fine and good about doing away with something that is recyclable and reusable? Many people reuse the plastic bags for things like bathroom garbage. Now instead of reusing a bag, I have to purposely go buy a plastic bag to use for my garbage and throw away. And yes, they are recyclable. It makes NO sense at all to do this.
I used them to clean up after my dog.
This is yet another feel-good feather for Adam’s cap, upping his stock for his eventual move to the private sector.
It’s cool, though. I have decided that my St. Bernard is now an “artist” and the mountain-sized dumps that he takes on the sidewalk will be left for everyone to enjoy!
Plastic bags (just not grocery bags) will still be available. There are produce bags, tortilla bags, bread bags, newspaper bags, clothing shipment bags, etc — those, I suggest, folks use to pick up their dog poo and line their bathroom trashcans. That’s what I do! Also, on a side note: plastic bags are NOT recycable curbside in Portland and cost the recycling facilities millions of dollars to clean out of the machines. Let’s be resourceful and use reusable bags and re-use other plastic bags where we can!
@ stajpace – I did not say there were curbside recyclable, I said they are recyclable, which they are. Many stores have containers to take them to recycle them. So instead of making the curbside recycling take something that IS recyclable, we should ban it right?? They don’t take many plastic, recyclable lids either, shall we ban all those? Let us ban everything that the curbside recycling is too damn lazy to deal with and recycle.
This policy really makes me want to never recycle anything ever again. And guess what, I don’t have to if I don’t want to. I can throw everything in the garbage if I want. So lets not actually work on getting people to recycle things that are recyclable, but ban them instead.
As long as this idiot ban is in place, I have decide I will put everything that is recyclable into the garbage and all my garbage into the recycling containers.
I re-use the plastic grocery bags to line a small garbage can to clean the litter box. Unless you are cleaning the box immediately after the cat goes, the bread bag, produce bags etc are NOWHERE big enough. I have a life & can’t spend my time with these smaller bags hovering over the cat box.