Environment

Vancouver considers plastic baglessness

by Rob Peters | November 22, 2007 at 11:03 am

696 views | 5 Recommendations | 3 comments

A bag brouhaha? Vancouver city councillors are debating whether to ban plastic bags at grocery stores.

Check out a related article here.

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.

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liamssoft

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 12:29 on November 22nd, 2007

Rob Peters, anything that cuts down on the use of expensive petrochemicals is Good stuff.

ianivs

at 16:13 on November 22nd, 2007

I'd love to see plastic bags getting banned from most stores. I have a few reusable canvas bags that I take with me when I go grocery shopping and it would be very nice if we can get people to do the same, instead of just replacing plastic and increasing the amount of paper bags that will not be recycled. Some grocery stores already sell reusable bags but almost nobody uses them.

Steel Wool

at 17:29 on November 22nd, 2007

The National Environment Agency (NEA) in Singapore has really buffed up their recycling efforts with cooperation from retail establishments. I took the photo of the Ikea plastic bags from the Singapore outlet. Another major retail establishment, the NTUC Fair Price, where most Singaporeans get their daily provisions, have put in place a policy to deduct $0.10 from every $10 spent if no plastic bags are requested by the customer. Other retail outlets have also sweetened the deal. In a place where most people are meticulous about expenditure, these practices have been effective in putting the onus on the public to decline plastic bag use rather than to be denied the distribution of plastic bags. Although the benefits of bring environmentally friendly have extrinsic values, I believe that the habit of using the calico grocery bags will develop over time and become second nature to the successive generations.