Boulder City Council Considers Ban On Plastic Bags

At its Tuesday meeting, the Boulder City Council will consider a ban on or mandatory fee for using plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and convenience stores.

The Daily Camera reports that a group of students from Fairview High School and Summit Middle School have lobbied the City Council to consider a ban or impose a fee for plastic bag use.

The proposed options for plastic bag usage in the city are part of an update to the city’s Zero Waste Master Plan, 7News reports. The update gives several options to the city: An outright plastic bag ban, a 10 to 20 cent fee on any disposable paper or plastic bag, or full ban of plastic bags and a fee for paper bag use.

The City of Boulder updates its Master Plans every five years and the last update was in 2006, according to the City of Boulder website. The original Master Plan for Waste Reduction was accepted by the City Council in 2006 and the waste reduction goals and how the community intends to reach those goals needs to be reviewed and updated over time.

The City of Boulder’s 2006 Master Plan for Waste Reduction can be viewed in its entirety here.

The efforts to alter the way people use plastic bags in Boulder has been in the works for months. Back in May, HuffPost reported that grassroots activist group New Era Colorado had approached the City Council with a number of possible options for plastic bag use in the city, from fee-based usage charge to an outright ban. Steve Fenberg, the founder and Executive Director of New Era, said this about plastic bags to HuffPost:

Basically, single use plastic bags are the most ubiquitous symbol of our throwaway culture. The bags have a shelf life of almost an hour, they contaminate recycling systems, create more pollution, waste our natural resources - the cost of oil alone should be reason enough not to use these bags. Oil byproducts like petroleum are used to make these plastic bags and oil is expensive, it’s getting more expensive and it should simply not be used in creating something as frivolous and wasteful as these bags. And in Boulder alone we use 40-50 million of these bags a year and that’s just one small city. The impact of not using these bags is staggeringly large.

The City Council will only consider the measures on Tuesday, they won’t make a final decision, Fox31 reports.

According to CBSDenver, Boulder is not the first city to adopt such a strict stance on plastic bag usage. Cities like San Jose, Calif. and other cities in Colorado like Telluride have banned plastic bags entirely and imposed a fee on paper bags. Basalt, Colo. approved a 20 cent fee for plastic bags just this past September.

Comments

[Bike Commuter]

11:08 AM on 10/13/2011

I wouldn't ban them, but I would charge for them. ALDI charges for their bags, either paper or plastic. Most people where I live bring their own bags to ALDI. I see very few people paying for bags there. I reuse paper bags that I have gotten there previously as well as thermal bags that I bought a couple of years ago. The problem with banning is that sometimes people do forget their bags. That is also the problem with recycling programs.

[Doug Lober]

04:48 PM on 10/12/2011

Boulder is an eco savvy town and its only a natural progression to eliminate single use plastic bags. First was some cities in CA, then Telluride, yesterday was Aspen and its only fitting that Boulder, CO will follow suit.

Way to go Boulder!
http://reusethisbag.com

[jcblueknightilxi]

03:50 AM on 10/12/2011

.........and in a related story. Drug dealers in Boulder City have stopped selling bags of dope and are now just selling the bags. 7News has exclusive video showing dozens of shoppers lined up in a grocery store parking lot to buy the illegal bags.

[niter36]

02:31 AM on 10/12/2011

just imagine picking up a dog poo in a reusable bag,LOL

[BEATRIX KIDDO]

01:26 AM on 10/12/2011

There shouldn't be a fee on paper bags, they're 100% biodegradable.

[pooonshu]

01:11 AM on 10/12/2011

"Eew. Reusable bags have icky germs in them." Gee. I thought that by 2011, folks would know how to use a washer and dryer. It works to get E.Coli out of our underwear, doesn't it?

As for the plastic bags: If people would learn how to recycle them (there are bins at most supermarkets. You're probably going there anyway.), and if waste management companies would learn how to dispose of them properly, they wouldn't be a problem.

[nikkitytom]

01:09 AM on 10/12/2011

Well I for one don't waste those plastic bags. I use them to bag my garbage and kitty litter. I suppose we'll then be forced to BUY garbage bags.

How about more attention to silly packaging .. a much bigger problem. Everything packed in plastic bubbles on huge cards. Or the stupid "clamshell" packs in grocery stores, which aren't only ecological disasters, but which also allow the store to pawn off over ripe produce.

Or simple shipping waste .... those ridiculous "packing peanits". I order jewelry supplies
from Fire Mountain which are barely more bulky than a pound of butter and they arrive in a huge box, wedged under an enormous cataloque I didn't request and buried in thousands of little styrofoam peanuts. ( I already have a half dozen of that identical catalogue.) And they charge over $20 for shipping. The same sized order from Hong Kong charges less than $5.00 for shipping and is packed sensibly in a suitably sized ,mailer.

And the WORST waste. Bottled water. Pure and simple. Not only the outrageous price for water but the bottles ..... banning bottled water would do a lot more good a lot faster than banning plastic bags.

[pooonshu]

01:23 AM on 10/12/2011

We've always used them in small trash cans and for diapers and kitty litter. Now, just wait for people to give you a hard time because "they're going in the trash that way too." I'll try to preempt that by saying "If you threw out shopping bags AND trash bags, that would be even more waste."

[Joann Reid Scanlon]

12:46 AM on 10/12/2011

i have used cloth bags for years....dillons (kroger) used to pay 5 cents for each bag i used.....

we also have made (different sized) drawstring bags to use for christmas gifts and birthday gifts....they are reusable and we dont have a lot of expensive wrapping paper going into the trash

[taterbugbanner]

12:26 AM on 10/12/2011

Well,How about just making hemp legal again,(as well as its by-products),and making bags from that? tax revenues,anyone?.I know this forum is about plastic bags,but why should we as The People not think about a little reality here. George Washington grew hemp,and promoted it,as far as I have read histoy. Alcohol is still legal,despite the best efforts of certain people in our so called government to supress it.If I can grow a plant that is universally useful to everyone,yes including pot smokers,and make everybody happy,then why not? its all economics,and I only have a GED. Seems to me that if even I can figure this out,and "our" government cant,then we need to elect down to earth people to run this damn country just like we did when we elected President Abe Lincholn. Now it seems like whoevever has the big bucks can buy themselves an election. People,that is BULLSHIT,and anybody that has any sense at all will see it for what it is.Just my 2 cents worth.

[kendallcougs]

12:06 AM on 10/12/2011

They just enacted this very ban here in Portland, Oregon. It sucks. The paper bags' handles tear off all the time. I always saved some of the plastic bags to use as pooper scoopers, but no more. Besides the convenience arguments, however, there are a few more. One, I don't really like the gov't telling me what to do...however, it's done in so many facets of our lives, it's really inevitable. One of the Fred Meyer stores here, as an experiment, stopped using plastic entirely a year ago. They found that the use of reusable bags that the customer brought in went up barely at all, something like 6% from before they phased them out. They did surveys, and found that most people forgot them, even a year after they got rid of them. Portland enacted this ban even AFTER a plastic bag recycling company offered to built a recycling plant for the bags in town. But one of the most powerful arguments is that the reusable bags, typically made of cotton, do NOT last nearly as long as expected, and use MORE resources (animal feed, fertilizer for that feed, diesel fuel on the ranch, etc., etc., etc..) than the plastic bags do. Of course, I don't like plastic bags littering streets or beaches any more than the next guy, but that is why the recycling plant would have been nice. I just think it's a solution in search of a problem, in my opinion.

[djrobins]

04:04 AM on 10/12/2011

I guess that's better than saving the poop for bag scoopers!

[flairbrusher]

11:58 PM on 10/11/2011

Here we go again. Sorry, Boulder! You're letting the young and naive get the best of you and your money!

[djrobins]

04:06 AM on 10/12/2011

Young and naive, hell, this is just another example of government by political correctness.

[Sigel]

11:58 PM on 10/11/2011

Contrary to what most people think, plastic grocery bags will decompose naturally if left exposed to the sun.
Burying them in a lanfill is what causes them to exist for so long.

Plastic milk and water gallon jugs will also decompose in sunlight.
I have had these jugs disintegrate with water in them.

States need to change their regulations for the construction and operation of landfills.
Instead of encapsulating them, they should be left open, or at least use a permeable cap..
Let the air and rainfall in to promote the biological decomposition of the waste.
Recycle the leachate from the bottom of the landfill and use it to irrigate the waste.

This would allow reuse of the same landfill space and reduce the future land requirements.
C'mon guys...., this is not rocket science.

[fds]

11:41 PM on 10/11/2011

"I GUESS YOU WILL HAVE TO PUT YOUR STINKEY GARBAGE STRAIGHT IN THE CAN POOR GARBAGE MAN WILL LOVE YOU FOR THAT !"...

Lead: "At its Tuesday meeting, the Boulder City Council will consider a ban on or mandatory fee for using plastic shopping bags at supermarkets and convenience stores."

Key phrase: "at supermarkets and convenience stores"

Break out your caps lock key, and burn it.

[hchavez]

11:37 PM on 10/11/2011

It's about time.

[Sigel]

11:22 PM on 10/11/2011

Since so many other cities have already gone through these gyrations, this is hardly national news.