San Antonio Express-News
L.A. Lorek
A sea of plastic bags clogging city drains, endangering wildlife and contributing to landfill waste has become a major concern in the United States and worldwide.
Now Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, has filed Senate Bill 338 for the upcoming Texas legislative session, which would require businesses that provide customers with plastic checkout bags to also offer for sale a reusable bag as an alternative.
The reusable bag would have to be reasonably priced and could be made of cloth or other machine washable fabric, a thick plastic or other material. The bill also would require that a business provide a plastic checkout bag recycling program if it offers plastic bags to customers.
“This is meant to reduce the havoc these bags have on the environment,” Van de Putte said.
She proposed the legislation after her son, Paul, 19, a sophomore majoring in environmental studies at Texas A&M, told her it takes 1,000 years for a plastic bag to break down in a landfill. She asked her staff to research the matter.
“We looked at how destructive these plastic bags really are,” she said.
Since then, Van de Putte has met with many retailers and has received a lot of positive feedback on the legislation. She’s also met with officials at the San Antonio Water System and the city’s Solid Waste Management Department, who have told her how problematic and costly the plastic bags have become. They clog sewer and water lines and lead to a whole host of problems, she said.
Van de Putte also met with people in the fishing industry. Plastic bags threaten fish, turtles, birds and other wildlife who mistake the debris for food.
“It’s a start,” Robin Schneider, executive director of the Texas Campaign for the Environment, said about the proposed legislation. But she says more measures need to be put into place. She would like to see the state mandate that stores recycle a set number of plastic bags and eventually move to ban them altogether.
U.S. consumers annually use billions of plastic bags, made out of petroleum. Plastics are an increasing part of municipal solid waste, according to a 2005 Environmental Protection Agency report.
In 1960, plastics made up 390,000 tons, or less than 1 percent, of overall municipal solid waste, but that has since increased to 28.9 million tons, or nearly 12 percent in 2005, according to the EPA. And it reports that less than 1.7 million tons, or 5.7 percent, of that plastic was recycled.
H-E-B Grocery Co. supports the plastic bag legislation and has worked with Van de Putte on it, said spokeswoman Dya Campos. It also sells canvas shopping bags and other reusable bags in a variety of styles starting at 99 cents at its checkout stands.
“In a perfect world, every customer would use a reusable bag,” Campos said. “But we realize our customers need options.”
H-E-B provides recycling bins in every store for customers to recycle soft plastic bags. In 2008, H-E-B recycled 3 million pounds of plastic bags, Campos said.
On April 22, Whole Foods quit using disposable plastic grocery bags at its checkouts, said Suzy Holleron, spokeswoman at the Alamo Quarry Market store in San Antonio. It now offers customers 100 percent recycled paper bags and sells reusable shopping bags.
“We’ve had no negative feedback on it,” Holleron said. “Everyone’s aware of their carbon footprint. They understand the importance of taking this step.”
The nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, has pledged to reduce plastic bags handed out in its stores by one-third from 2008 levels by 2013, according to a news release.
The Environmental Defense Fund, which has calculated global consumption of plastic bags at 4 trillion per year, estimates Wal-Mart could eliminate 9 billion plastic shopping bags annually from its stores.
In 2007, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to ban plastic bags in grocery stores and pharmacies. Other cities such as Austin, Dallas, New York and Seattle have studied the issue. The movement to ban plastic bags isn’t limited to the United States; it’s gone global.
Last year, China banned retailers from using ultra-thin plastic bags, according to the Environmental News Service in Beijing.
Eventually, Van de Putte would like to see Texas ban plastic bags altogether. But she thinks that is a few years away. This bill is a good first start, she said.
Whenever she goes shopping, Van de Putte totes reusable bags in the back of her car to take into the store. It’s all about changing behavior to benefit the environment, she said.
“I’m seeing people toting reusable bags more and more,” she said.
Tags: single-use bags
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