Austin retailers and grocery stores could no longer offer plastic bags at checkout counters under a ban Mayor Lee Leffingwell and two other City Council members will propose today.Austin isn't the first city to consider such legislation. In California, the ban started in San Francisco in select stores; if pending legislation goes through, it could soon expand to all stores not only in the city, but in the entire state. A similar ban exists in coastal Brownsville, TX as well as North Carolina and was recently passed in Portland, OR.
- Austin American-Statesman
According to the article the Mayor says that the ban would be phased in gradually, but doesn't mention when it would start.
Leffingwell said he thinks paper bags should still be an option at checkout counters because they're included in Austin's curbside collection program for recyclables and they don't gum up recycling machinery as plastic bags do.
But he said retailers may want or need to charge a fee of a few cents per paper bag to compel customers to get in the habit of bringing canvas or reusable bags.
- Austin American-Statesman
Austin attempted to ban the bags in 2008 but stopped short after large retailers complained.
Austin city leaders, led by then-Council Member Leffingwell, nearly enacted a plastic bag ban in 2008 and then held off when six big retailers — H-E-B, Randalls, Walmart, Target, Walgreens and Whole Foods — agreed to try to reduce by 50 percent the amount of plastic bags they send to landfills. (Whole Foods later stopped offering plastic bags at checkout.)So will the council pass it this time? After this last election the only conservative council person lost a run off election to a more liberal candidate. We eill have to wait and see what actually transpires in the next few weeks.
- Austin American-Statesman
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My name is Kevin, and that's what I think. What do you think? Agree? Disagree?
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Non biodegradable plastic bags can cause harm to our environment. This is the reason why the Austin government wants to ban it. It is always a good practice to recycle an reuse plastic bags to prevent and pollutions. You can also opt to use Eco-friendly bags.
ReplyDeleteThanks I understand the liberal hogwash that is being spewed. I don't disagree that to many of these bags are clogging up the landfills and such. My concern is that it should be education not laws to change people. As I said, my wife and I use cloth bags but we like to get a few plastic bags to use in the small trash cans around the house and for using when cleaning the litter box out.
DeleteAll this law does in our case (and the case of many others) is force us to buy plastic trash sacks. Something that just isn't in our very tight budget. Which in turn means all they did was replace one type of single use plastic bags for another.
Which aren't very eco-friendly either, but that's the way liberals are they don't think about those kind of things. Instead they laugh and scoff when the poor say they can't afford to buy trash bags and use these bags to help make their budget stretch. Just look t the the comments I received on my letter to the editor in the Austin Chronicle if you don't believe me. Some comments there laughed at the notion that someone couldn't afford to buy trash bags. So much for the liberals being for the poor.