Swapping the Sack

Plastic bag bans and taxes are nothing new. San Francisco became the first city in the United States to ban single-use carryout bags at large supermarkets and drugstore chains in 2007. In that city, such stores are permitted to supply recyclable paper bags, compostable plastic bags and reusable bags. Now the city is considering expanding its ban to include a 10-cent charge on all other bags given to customers at the checkout or takeout counter.

In early March, Austin, Texas, joined the more than two-dozen U.S. cities to ban or tax plastic bags. Under Austin’s legislation, beginning in March 2013, all disposable plastic and paper bags at all retail checkout counters in the city will be banned. The Austin City Council decided against enacting a fee on disposable bags before the ban takes effect.

In Austin, once the legislation goes into effect, retailers will be permitted to offer their customers reusable bags, which the city defines as being made of cloth or durable materials. Thicker paper and plastic bags that have handles also will be permitted. Robin Schneider, the Austin-based central Texas executive director of Texas Campaign for the Environment, says these bags must have a thickness of 4 millimeters or more for plastic and a weight of 65 pounds or more for paper.

Austin’s ban excludes bags used for meat, fish, produce, bulk foods, newspapers, dry cleaning and restaurant carryout items. Charities and nonprofits also will be permitted to distribute food and other items in single-use bags.

The Austin City Council says it plans to spend $2 million on a public education campaign about the new ordinance.
 

Austin Joins the Ban-Wagon
Schneider says proposed bag bans in the United States have increasingly applied to both plastic and paper bags. In fact, Texas Campaign for the Environment says it advocated in favor of the city’s legislation, encouraging the council to include single-use paper bags in its ordinance.

She says that if paper bags are not banned outright through city ordinances, fees are often imposed for their use. These charges reflect the life cycle impact of the paper bags, which often can be significant in terms of global warming, water use, pollution and transportation costs, she says. “There is not a huge benefit if people switch to paper from plastic,” Schneider contends.

H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, based out of Dallas, agrees that the Austin ordinance is more comprehensive than similar laws because it covers single-use paper and plastic bags provided by any retailer, not just supermarkets and pharmacies.

Phil Rozenski, director of sustainability and marketing for Hartsville, S.C.-based Hilex Poly, a manufacturer and recycler of plastic bags, describes Austin’s legislation as “the most draconian we’ve seen to date,” because it bans both plastic and paper bags.

Effects: Intended & Otherwise
“None of these laws are delivering what people are looking for: a reduction in litter,” Rozenski continues. “We’re not seeing that occur.”

He says a notable reduction in litter has not been seen in areas with bag bans because, according to the U.S. EPA, plastic bags make up less than 1 percent of the little stream. “They can’t have a significant impact,” Rozenski says of plastic bag bans, “because there is not that much [plastic bag litter] to begin with.”

However, Schneider says the results of a similar ordinance in Brownsville, Texas, point to a significant reduction in plastic bag litter. She says Brownsville’s plastic bag ban has resulted in 375,000 fewer bags per day in the city. Austin is three times larger than Brownsville and doesn’t have the cross-border traffic that city has, Schneider adds, so she expects the impact of its ordinance to be substantially greater. The one drawback to lessening plastic bag litter, Schneider jokes, is that other litter is more noticeable because the plastic bags are no longer covering it up.

Despite recycling programs for plastic bags offered by retailers in Austin, Schneider says the bags still contribute to Austin’s litter problem, with the majority of city residents polled claiming they were a significant problem.

“They are designed to fail,” she says of single-use plastic bags. “We need to turn toward products and packaging designed to last. It is part of a larger effort to reduce and reuse things, which is preferable to recycling.”

Burnett says retailers could lose sales to other retailers who are outside of the cities that have adopted such ordinances. He says, for instance, that Los Angeles retailers in the unincorporated area of that city, where the bag ban came into effect earlier than in the incorporated area of Los Angeles, lost sales to retailers in the incorporated area.

“When people have a choice, they choose plastic bags, all other things being equal,” he says of this behavior. Burnett adds that these patrons were willing to travel a bit farther to continue benefitting from the convenience of plastic bags.

“In cities with these kinds of laws, retailers are seeing lots of business going outside the city,” Rozenski agrees.

Burnett says some grocery stores in cities with bag bans have complained that their plastic shopping baskets have disappeared, as shoppers use them to carry their goods out of the store, failing to return the baskets.

“There is an economic impact for the stores involved,” he says. “Major chains can absorb this loss for awhile. It is harder for smaller independent retailers to do it.”

Rozenski claims ordinances banning or taxing bags also can negatively affect shoppers by taking money out of their grocery budgets, either to spend on purchasing bags or to gas up the car to shop outside the city at retailers who are not governed by such ordinances.

However, Schneider says Austin retailers will be able to offer heavier-gauge paper and plastic bags to customers, with the paper bags costing as little as 25 cents, making them an affordable option for many of the city’s residents.

Rozenski also claims banning or taxing the use of plastic bags could negatively affect retailers’ recycling programs. “They are disincentives to having recycling programs that involve more than bags,” he says.

This could be a reality in Austin if the Texas Retailers Association has its way. According to an article in Austin’s The Statesman, “The Texas Retailers Association has been the most vocal opponent of a ban, saying it would discourage retailers from continuing programs they’ve built to accept plastic bags and other plastic packaging for recycling, meaning more of those goods could end up in landfills.”

The Texas Retailers Association did not respond to an interview request from Recycling Today.

Alternative Approaches
Opponents of Austin’s ordinance also have asked the city to allow residents to include plastic bags in their curbside recycling mix, according to The Statesman. However, the city’s trash and recycling department says adding plastic bags would be costly and could damage recycling machinery.

Burnett worries about the potential loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs as the result of bag bans. “We constantly hear politicians talk about need to keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S.,” he says. “Plastic bags are manufactured here in America. The industry employs more than 10,000 people directly and thousands more indirectly.” He says, by comparison, more than 90 percent of reusable bags are manufactured in China.

Rozenski says policies such as Austin’s ordinance produce “a lot of unintended consequences.” And while he says Hilex Poly has not had to lay off anyone yet as a result of bag bans and taxes, he says it’s only a matter of time before bag manufacturers and recyclers are affected.

Instead, Rozenski says he would like to see more collaboration between bag manufacturers, recyclers and legislators. “Film recycling is a growing industry,” Rozenski says. “Misguided policies undermine that growth.”

As an alternative to ordinances, he says he’d prefer to see increased access to recycling, improved consumer education, anti-litter legislation that addresses all products and greater use of recycled content in products. “We believe in offering consumers education and a choice—making them a stakeholder rather than dictating what they should do.”

Burnett says, “In my opinion, any time a government wants to restrict people’s freedoms or ability to choose, it should have a good reason for it and present in a public forum.” He says he’d prefer to see bag bans put on ballots so citizens could vote on such issues. “Those that don’t like plastic bags don’t have to use them,” he says. “If people believe plastic is more costly or worse for the environment, they should have to prove it or, absent that, let individual choice reign.”

The author is managing editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at dtoto@gie.net.