Special Section

Committee Aims to Bag Plastic Bags

businesses, environmentalists seek common ground on reducing, reusing, and recycling

Tom Giffey |

The Eau Claire City Council stirred a bit of controversy earlier this year when it voted unanimously to form an advisory committee to explore ways to cut down on the use of plastic shopping bags. While many people – including council members themselves – thought this was a good idea, other residents bristled at the thought of the government micromanaging (or outright banning) their use of throw-away plastic sacks.

Snide remarks about Big Brother have since waned as the volunteer panel – officially the City of Eau Claire Sustainable Bag Committee – has quietly set to work compiling ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle the multitude of plastic (and paper) bags used by city residents: If Eau Claire consumers are typical of the nation as a whole, that’s an astonishing 21 million plastic bags each year. In addition to litter, these ubiquitous plastic sacks carry a host of environmental concerns, including the fossil fuels used to create, transport, and dispose of them – as well as the fact they may take years to biodegrade in landfills (if they decompose at all).

Considering all of the weighty environmental concerns society faces, “This should be something that’s solvable,” David Soll, the committee’s co-chairman, said of the disposable bag conundrum. “There’s some sort of consensus that we’re probably using more bags than we need to.”

"There’s some sort of consensus that we’re probably using more bags than we need to." – David Soll, co-chairman, Sustainable Bag Committee

The 14-member committee – which comprises two City Council members, environmentalists, businesspeople, trash haulers, educators, and other interested citizens – has been meeting for several months, and recently winnowed down a list of strategies in three categories: reduce, reuse, and recycle. Suggestions – which the committee will eventually hone, debate, and vote upon – ranged the gamut from carrots to sticks for residents and retailers.

REDUCE

• An education campaign to encourage using fewer disposable bags.
• A possible per-bag fee.
• A phased-in requirement to use biodegradable and compostable bags.

REUSE

• Educating consumers about using reusable bags.
• Requiring retailers to offer a 5-cent credit for each reusable bag customers use.
• Encouraging retailers to offer other incentives for reusable bags.

RECYCLE

• Mandate curbside recycling of plastic bags. (Currently, only one Eau Claire trash hauler – Boxx Sanitation – takes plastic bags.)
• Educate consumers about recycling bags.
• Collect a fee on plastic items, then refund that fee when consumers bring them back to the store (a bit like an old-fashioned bottle deposit, but for bags).

Ecological challenges are often framed in black and white, with environmentalists inevitably pitted against business owners. (Which group is described as wearing the black or the white hat typically depends on your political leanings.) The real world, of course, is much more nuanced, and the Sustainable Bag Committee offers a healthy example of a wide swathe of citizens getting together to hash out an issue cooperatively. Environmentally inclined committee members know that not every seemingly Earth-friendly idea actually works: Soll, an assistant professor of environmental students at UW-Eau Claire, noted that the city of Madison’s requirement that plastic bags must be recycled apparently hasn’t increased the recycling rate much. (It seems many Madisonians are still bringing their bags back to grocery stores, as they had for years, instead of putting them in curbside bins.) And businesses know that they must respond to their customers’ desires: Committee co-chairman Mike Buck, CEO of Consumers Cooperative Association (which operates Mega Foods), noted that Mega and other local grocery stores have been selling reusable bags, offering a per-bag discount, and collecting used plastic bags for several years because of consumer demand.

Nonetheless, Buck added, “This is about changing behavior.” In other words, grocers and other retailers can make it easier for shoppers to reuse or recycle bags, but it’s up to those shoppers to do so.

“This is a societal problem,” Soll agreed. “This is not about ‘the retailers are bad.’ This is about how we’re going to come together and see how we can solve the problem.” Considering the complex interplay of consumer decision-making, environmental stewardship, financial cost, and other factors, “The problem is much, much greater than a paper or plastic grocery bag,” Soll said.

But as with any change, keeping more plastic out of the waste stream has to start somewhere, and Eau Claire is one of many cities wrestling with the problem. Soll and Buck say their committee will make recommendations to the City Council by late October or early November. Then it will be up to the council to debate and possibly act upon them – and for the public to vote on them with their bags and their dollars.