Austin bans bags

They go farther than other cities have gone.

At 2 a.m. [Friday], the Austin City Council passed one of the broadest bag laws in the nation, agreeing to ban disposable paper and plastic bags at all retail checkout counters starting in March 2013.

Before and after the ban takes effect, the city plans to do a $2 million education campaign to make customers aware of the change and remind them to bring reusable bags.

The council decided not to enact a fee on disposable bags before the ban takes effect. A fee had been discussed as a way to help shoppers and retailers prepare for the ban.

Austin is the first big Texas city to pass a bag ban. More than two dozen U.S. cities have bag laws, most of them prohibiting plastic bags and imposing a fee on paper.

In Austin, retailers will be able to offer only reusable bags, defined as those made of cloth, durable materials or thicker paper and plastic bags that have handles.

Exempt will be single-use bags used for bulk foods, meat, fish and produce, newspaper delivery, dry cleaning and restaurant carry-out foods. Also exempt will be the bags that charities and nonprofits use to distribute food and other items.

Here was a preview story from Monday. I’m not thrilled with the paper bag ban. Paper bags aren’t nearly the litter problem that plastic bags are, and besides, who doesn’t use paper bags to store their other paper for curbside recycling pickup? I’m all in for doing something about plastic bags, but I would have voted against a paper bag ban if I’d been on Austin City Council. And I must admit, the more I think about it, the more I find myself in agreement with the approach of taxing instead of banning the plastic bags.

A tax by itself will dramatically reduce the use of plastic bags, judging from the experience of other cities. A tax will also generate money we can use to clean up other litter — plastic bags aren’t the only things littering our creek beds and parks. The city could divert the $4 million it intends to spend on educating consumers about the ban to cleaning up litter. The City could put a lot of people to work and clean up a lot of litter with $4 million and the tax income stream. If you’re really interested in a cleaner city, a tax will get you that.

I don’t oppose plastic bag bans, especially in coastal cities, but the argument about using the revenue generated from a bag tax specifically for litter cleanup is compelling. When the city of Houston finally gets around to talking about this – we will talk about this sooner or later, right? – that’s the approach I’d like to see given priority.

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5 Responses to Austin bans bags

  1. Tyson Sowell says:

    Thank you for covering the Austin bag ban. TCE’s folks in Austin have been working very hard on this issue over the past 5 years and we are very pleased with this victory.

    Paper bags, although recyclable, still pose a great environmental problem. According to Green Cities California and ICF International, production of single-use paper bags produces “significantly larger greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and results in greater atmospheric acidification, water consumption, and ozone production than plastic bags.”

    Additionally, most paper bags are produced using 40% post-consumer recycled content, while the remaining 60% comes from harvesting trees adding to deforestation.

    Paper bag production also requires a 20 times more water and 8 times the fossils fuels as plastic bag production.

    Paper bags, although not a large pollution problem on the backend, are still a major pollution producer when it comes to production.

    Regarding a bag fee, it was the opinion of the City of Austin Legal Department that a city cannot place an ongoing tax/fee on bags without the legislature voting to create such an opportunity or a vote of the citizenry.

    Additionally, bag fees have been useful in some parts of the country to reduce bag consumption but a bag ban ensures that reduction in bag pollution and takes the burden of cleanup off of the municipalities while not burdening the citizenry.

    There is no good reason why retailers should supply folks with single-use bags and municipalities should have to pay for their cleanup and/or recycling when reusable bags are easily accessible, inexpensive, and don’t cause the kinds of pollution issues associated with single-use bags.

    Although recycling is necessary, society should move toward the better resource management strategy – reduce and reuse. These first two pillars of the 3 R’s regarding resource management are first for a reason. The bag ban ensures that the 3 R’s – reduce, reuse, and recycle – are being practiced in the proper order for maximum resource conservation.

  2. Ross says:

    Bag bans, yet more unwarranted Progressive driven intrusion into the lives of others. I hate reusable bags – they are unhygenic, and take up space I don’t have. I’ll never have one when I need it, because I won’t clutter my car with them.

  3. Brad says:

    Or alternately a “warranted” Conservative bug-a-boo to fire up the LCDs against common sense.

  4. Ron in Houston says:

    I’m with Ross on this one. I try to use reusable bags when possible, but making sure they get from the house back out to the car and then into the store doesn’t always happen. Taxing plastic bags to fund litter clean up is one thing, but banning them is the nanny state at its best.

  5. Pingback: Austin bag ban lawsuit filed – Off the Kuff

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