^{Photo by The Environmental Blog}

Are You Ready For the Switch?

On October 15th, 2011 Portland, Oregon will join ranks to ban plastic bags with Californian cities/counties: San Francisco, San Jose, Palo Alto, Malibu, Fairfax, Santa Monica, Manhattan Beach, Calabasas, Long Beach, Marin County, and unincorporated Los Angeles County.

Many, many other cities (which you are welcome to let me know about via the comment section below) across the United States and across the world have existing bans on single use plastic bags, are in the process of banning, or are seriously considering banning the bag.

It all started when San Francisco lead the nation in 2007 stating that plastic bags lead to litter, increased demand on oil (needed to make plastic bags), and for not being able to break down in the environment including in landfills nor the ocean.

Plastic Industry Displeased with Movement

The plastics industry is starting to lose ground by every municipality that adopts anti plastic bag policies. The town of Fairfax, population 7,000, was threatened with a lawsuit by the plastics industry for unfairly implementing a ban on plastic bags saying that such an act could harm the environment by increasing paper bag usage. The city then made the ban voluntary which many supermarkets voluntarily follow.

Everyone knows that plastic bags are harmful to the environment. Environmentally conscious shoppers already carry around reusable bags when they head to the supermarket in cities and towns far and wide. Having a ban in place forces people to remember to bring their bags, thereby, reducing waste that does not easily decompose.

The ban in Portland targets supermarkets with $2 million or more in gross annual sales and stores with pharmacies and at least 10,000 square feet of space, such as Target and Walmart. Mayor Sam Adams considers those types of retailers the biggest source of disposable plastic bags in the city of Portland. Several chains that fall under the new rules, such as Fred Meyer and New Seasons, already don’t use plastic checkout bags in Portland. I’ve already noticed from shopping at Safeway that they’ve already begun transitioning out their usage of plastic bags and have substituted using more paper bags. It’s unclear if these supermarkets will start charging a fee for paper bags or not, but they are allowed to do so yet not required to do so.

Portland wanted to ban the plastic bag much sooner, but decided to wait and see if a statewide ban in Oregon would make it through the legislative process. When that attempt failed, Portland acted on its own and voted to ban the bag back on July 21, 2011. Now the ban will officially begin on October 15th. It will be interesting to read on twitter if people remember to bring their bags and if any snafu comes of it.

Plastic Usage

It’s estimated that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. 380 billion of those plastic bags are in the U.S. and governments have been slow to accomplish anything to remedy the situation.

Hopefully, people in these plastic bag banned towns will be the change that is necessary and lead by example to help with just one more thing the environment will thank you for in doing.

Does your city/county/state have a ban on the evil Plastic Bag? Post it in the comments section and let us know how that ban is working out.