Vancouver may consider plastic bag ban
Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, November 21, 2007
VANCOUVER - 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 this 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 like London and Paris have also instituted 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 strapped already working on other big environmental initiatives, like 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.
However, Stevenson said 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 alternative," 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 when they end 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.
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