Vision councillors want city to ban plastic bags

[st7860]

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n...2dd3ba&k=21495

San Francisco has just eliminated plastic bags from its grocery stores and Vancouver should look at doing the same, says the city's opposition party.

"This is a huge issue worldwide and this is something we can do easily and quickly in Vancouver. We can put our money where our mouth is," said Vision Vancouver Coun. Tim Stevenson.

He said he plans to bring forward a motion at Tuesday's council meeting asking staff to come up with options within 90 days for a plan to phase out plastic bags.

Stevenson said he got the idea a year ago, after talking with people in San Francisco.

San Francisco became the first American city to introduce a partial ban on plastic bags with a vote in March this year.

Under the ban, which just came into effect on Monday, plastic bags are banned in large grocery stores. In six months, pharmacy chains will have to follow suit.

Smaller stores of all kinds are not affected by the ban.

Neighbouring Oakland, Calif., has also passed a ban that will go into effect early next year, and other cities, including London and Paris, also have bans.

Non-Partisan Association Coun. Suzanne Anton, who is part of the majority on council, said although she is very sympathetic to the idea of getting rid of plastic bags, she doesn't think this is something Vancouver can take on right away and by itself.

"I completely agree that plastic bags are a big issue. But is this the right way to deal with it?" said Anton, a dedicated environmentalist who hasn't used plastic bags in years and has recently given up her car. "To phase them out, you'd need legislation and I don't think the city could do it by itself. It's an extremely complex piece of work."

Anton said staff are already stretched by other big environmental initiatives, such as the city's EcoDensity plan and waste-reduction programs.

She also said Metro Vancouver (formerly the Greater Vancouver Regional District) has a big zero-waste initiative in the works and a region-wide plastic-bag ban is one strategy being considered.

Stevenson said, however, those were the kinds of arguments people used when San Francisco was considering the ban.

"Often when you put in a motion like this, people start getting cold feet. If Suzanne Anton wants to vote against this, let her."

San Francisco, like Vancouver, is just one city in a region of many municipalities, although San Francisco's population is about 750,000, compared to Vancouver's 600,000.

City and regional solid-waste engineers here say plastic bags are not a huge part of the landfill.

Ken Carrasca, with regional utilities planning in Metro Vancouver, said plastic bags only account for about 10,000 tonnes of the 1.6 million tonnes that go into landfills each year. He said many of those bags are not just thrown out but have been used as residential garbage bags, so they're getting a kind of recycling.

Carrasca said the public has brought up the idea of banning bags during Metro Vancouver meetings on initiatives to reduce waste. "And if a municipality wants to promote a ban, why not?"

But, he said, retailers have also shown they're interested in offering alternatives to plastic bags.

"In the past six to eight months, we've seen many of them, Superstore, Save-On, Overwaitea, offering alternatives," he said.

The Sun tried to reach representatives of Safeway, the Pattison food division, which operates Overwaitea, and Retail BC, but did not get return calls.

Brian Davies, a Vancouver assistant city engineer, said the engineering department has never done an audit to see how many plastic bags are in the landfill.

The bigger problem they cause, he said, is ending up as litter on the streets.

The city did stop accepting plastic bags for yard trimmings about two years ago and has asked the public to switch to biodegradable paper bags.

fbula@png.canwest.com

[gordholio]

Grocery stores used to have paper grocery bags. I don't know when they changed to plastic (it was many years ago), but the paper ones were fine for me.

[mart242]

They should start by training the cashiers to fill the bags properly. Most of the time, you end up with twice as many bags than you need because they are barely filled up.

They should also tell the idiots that you don't need a plastic bag when you can carry that single item you bought in your hands.

[patrob]

I have always re-used all my plastic store bags wherever I could, I even use them as garbage bags & have never purchased regular garbage bags, since the store bags worked just fine

I can't see how the paper bags would work, unless they had handles

[rrraven]

They should start by training the cashiers to fill the bags properly. Most of the time, you end up with twice as many bags than you need because they are barely filled up..

Absolutely! I went to the grocery store the other day for a quick stop, asked the cashier (as always) to please pack the bags as full as possible, and then was distracted while she did the ringing up. In the end, I had 16 items in 9 bags! One bag for a bundle of bananas, another for a box of Ritz crackers - ridiculous! I think their shoulc be an incentive for the cashiers to minimize bags.

The biggest advantage to the current crop of reusable cloth bags isn't just that the bags get re-used, it's that one cloth bag is used where before 5 plastics might have been half-filled.

rrraven

[eelfliw]

I found a bunch of Knob Hill Farms cardboard boxes in my basement.

The prices range from 5 cents (probably from 1977 to 1978 time frame) to 25 cents. And a few plastic ones too. I'll be using these boxes to do grocery shopping.

It's an idea way ahead of its time.

[gman]

Just make all the stores work like NoFrill is doing. I think that is a good system.

[brunes]

These kinds of uninformed people should not be responsible for making environmental policies.

It uses more energy to create paper bags than plastic ones, and therefore results in more greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling paper also takes more energy than recycling plastic.

And neither paper nor plastic will properly bio-degrade in a modern sealed landfill.

So paper bags are actually worse for the environment than disposable plastic.

The best thing to do is use cloth or other reusable bags.

[corrupt123]

Just make all the stores work like NoFrill is doing. I think that is a good system.

Agreed. NoFrills charges $0.05 per bag, so the gov't should just introduce a tax on all bags of $0.04/bag (or whatever the difference is: $0.05 - manufactering cost)

Use the tax towards the environment. Hell, dump it all into public transit, I'd be happy with that. We use 10-15 billion bags a year in Canada. That works out to $400 000 000 in revenue annually (assuming 10 billion bags) which would sure as hell help out public transit it this country.

Not to mention a $0.05 tax per bag would cost people less anually than the marginal increases in the price of gas.

[jayk]

I would fully support such a ban.

Despite our own green efforts, the majority of people are still idiots.
There are idiot cashiers who don't know how to save on bags by filling properly, and idiot consumers who toss everything after they unload bags at home.

[MrBurns]

Manufacturers should downsize their packaging. I reuse my plastic bags, granted they aren't permanent but after 6-7 trips they become garbage bags.

[1226]

The real problem are the idiot customers that ask for everything to be double-bagged. Mostly older people who have probably had many plastic bags break on them with a normal load (which rarely happens anymore). Plastic bags used to be much poorer quality.

So where do you guys recycle grocery bags? Most of the time we bring our own collapsable boxes to use instead of bags but we still have ended up with a pretty large collection. I use them as lunch bags but that doesn't nearly use them up. Can I stick them in the regular blue bins for plastic containers?

[gman]

The real problem are the idiot customers that ask for everything to be double-bagged. Mostly older people who have probably had many plastic bags break on them with a normal load (which rarely happens anymore). Plastic bags used to be much poorer quality.

So where do you guys recycle grocery bags? Most of the time we bring our own collapsable boxes to use instead of bags but we still have ended up with a pretty large collection. I use them as lunch bags but that doesn't nearly use them up. Can I stick them in the regular blue bins for plastic containers?

Recycle depot. At least, Markham takes grocery bags in their depot.

[chilts]

London Drugs takes plastic bags.

I agree that cashiers use way too many bags. Almost everything now seems to be double bagged for no reason.

[ShopSmart]

what do you guys use for garbage bags at home. and what do you line your small little compost bin with?