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Taking the lead to ban the bag
Thursday, April 29, 2010

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CONGRATULATIONS Sioux Lookout! is what it says on onelessplasticbag.ca. There‘s a website for just about everything these days and the campaign to rid Canada of the environmental scourge that is the ubiquitous white, single-use plastic shopping bag (twice if used for garbage which still puts it in the landfill site) is well under way.
The Northwestern Ontario community – one of the farthest from the seat of provincial government in the otherwise enlightened city of Toronto – this week becomes the first Ontario community to move to ban the plastic bag. Congratulations, indeed.
First reading of a bylaw this month is being followed by public consultation until June 11. Second reading is scheduled for July. But it looks like there‘s no stopping this enlightened town‘s lead.
And they‘re serious about it. Set fines would start at $150 and go as high as $500.
There are an estimated 500 billion plastic grocery bags used worldwide each year. They blow around communities, snagging everywhere, looking awful and polluting the ground with their oil-based contents. Animals eat them and choke to death. They plug ditches and soil beaches. Everyone uses them – or used to because they‘re so handy. But more and more one sees reusable bags as citizens weary of the waste and take responsibility for doing their part to reduce it. So every “one less plastic bag” counts, which puts the onus on individual citizens and their communities.
The Sioux Lookout success is truly a community effort. Though it‘s not clear exactly where the initiative began, a citizens‘ environment committee last year involved Queen Elizabeth District High School‘s Grade 12 data management class in a local survey to determine the level of support for a proposed ban on the bag.
The students conducted 250 interviews, which is a decent percentage of the town of 5,500. Of the 210 residents surveyed, 71 per cent were in favour of a ban and nine per cent were opposed. Twenty per cent were undecided.
Unlike the experience in Nipigon, where store owners resisted a bag ban, support among businesses in Sioux Lookout was even higher than that of residents. Of the 30 businesses that responded to the student survey, 74 per cent said they favour a ban on plastic single-use bags.
Public consultation this summer can be expected to mirror the response to the student survey which should make Sioux Lookout Ontario‘s very first community to officially ban the plastic bag later this year.
China‘s done it; so has Mexico. But Ontario has resisted along with every municipality in which the idea has come up – except for Sioux Lookout. We hope that others follow its lead, including Thunder Bay.
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