Bag ban proposal goes interactive

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The City of Austin held an interactive public forum Monday night on the proposed single-use plastic and paper bag ordinance.

Austin Resource Recovery hosted the event in council chambers, and took questions and comments through phone lines, texts and even through the web.

The group conducted special polls during the meeting as well, in which participants gave answers through text messaging, which was displayed in real time on the monitors.

The questions were centered around the timeline for the bag ban proposal, cost of the phase-in period and also how the ban should move forward.

"If we're going to be the green city we say we are, we have to step it up," said Stacy Guidry with Texas Campaign for the Environment.

TCE had special 'bag monsters' on hand, which were basically three men decked out in paper and plastic bags, to help demonstrate what a collected piles of waste looks like in the environment.

"We want the bag monsters to leave. They clog up our gutters and storm drains and our sewage systems," she said. "We have made a commitment......that we would reduce at least one stream of waste by 50 percent by the end of 2012. This is the low hanging fruit. Bags have got to go."

"We want to point out the fact that plastic bags are reused by 9 out of every 10 Americans. They're highly recycled, highly recycleable," said Mark Daniels with the company Hilex Poly.

Opponents are concerned the ban will be a financial hit to certain stores, and cause thousands who work for recycling plants to lose their jobs.

"In the State of Texas there are 2,800 direct manufacturing jobs and more than 9,000 jobs supporting our industry," Daniels said.

Instead, opponents want the City of Austin to lean towards a stricter recycling program, instead.

There are currently three proposals for the single-use plastic and paper bag ordinance.

Of those proposals, the earliest suggests kicking the ban in sometime next year, and the latest in 2016.

All of the proposals suggest a phase-in period in which retailers would charge a per-bag or per-transaction fee of 10 to 25 cents per bag, or one-dollar per transaction.

Several bags would be exempt from the proposal including dry cleaning bags, packaged-food wrappers, prescription bags, newspaper bags and restaurant carry-out bags among others.

There would also be a hardship variance in place.

Input from Monday night's meeting will help draft a finalized version. City council members should receive the finalized proposal within the next few weeks. They're expected to take a vote on the ordinance the beginning of March.