Ban the plastic bag Vancouver

In late November, Vancouver’s official opposition party requested the City to eliminate the distribution of plastic bags from its grocery stores, something San Francisco legislated as of March of 2007, and the town of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba did the following month.

 

Vancouver Councilor Tim Stevenson wants staff to come up with options within 90 days for a plan to phase out plastic bags. To date it is not expected that small stores would be affected by the ban.

Unfortunately city staff is busy with other initiatives such as the city’s EcoDensity and waste-reduction plans, and Councilor Susan Anton, although sympathetic to the cause, was quoted as saying that it would entail complex piece of legislation to pass it though. However, many large retailers have beaten them to it, offering alternatives to plastic bags in the form of reusable canvas bags and/or charging consumers for every plastic bag they use. The City did stop accepting plastic bags for yard trimmings about two years ago and instead requires biodegradable paper bags.

Think about the impact if you had to think twice every time you disposed of something and you didn’t have a plastic bag on hand. Composting and recycling rates would really skyrocket.

Introduced over forty years ago, the plastics industry can’t imagine a life without the plastic bag. Luckily, other people can. There are several Vancouver-based businesses that are filling the niche for alternatives to plastic bags.  

BYOB – Bring Your Own Bag: this homegrown business is the brainchild of Jenny Hughes and Elizabeth Clark, who wanted to create an alternative to the single use plastic bag. BYOB offers eco-chic reusable cloth shopping bags that not only combine a passion for fashion and sustainability, they actually tell you about it with anti-plastic messages such as ‘F@*K Plastic!” to help raise awareness.

Red Flag Design, founded in 2004, is a design company with the mandate to create high quality, durable, functional and innovative bags using by-products of industrial production such as sailcloth. Locally sourced and manufactured, each Red Flag bag is unique.

GreenOne’s cheerfully printed, all-natural fibre market shoppers are more sophisticated than a tote and are the perfect fusion of function and design.