Leaf Rapids bans plastic carry bags from its stores

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/03/2007 (6956 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

LEAF Rapids will become the first community in Canada to ban plastic shopping bags in stores when a bylaw passes April 2 to require residents to use cloth or reusable bags instead.

The northern Manitoba town of less than 600 led the country last May by putting a three-cent levy on single-use plastic bags, but decided to go one step further.

“We did it to prove that, yeah, we are environmentally friendly,” said Bond Ryan, municipal administrator for Leaf Rapids.

Residents have all been given free reusable bags, and those who forget the bags at home can buy one from stores for between $1 and $2 each. Retailers will be fined $1,000 if they give out single-use plastic bags.

Ryan said the ban was encouraged when last year’s levy attracted the attention of a company that sells reusable, clothlike bags made of non-woven polypropylene, a recyclable plastic popular in Australia and Ireland.

The company, Instore Products, has since donated 5,000 of the bags to Leaf Rapids, which Bond said should be more than enough for the town.

Ryan said initially, he scoured the Internet looking for another bag-ban bylaw in Canada that he could copy — but he couldn’t find one. He ended up adapting a similar bylaw passed in Dublin, Ireland, “but made it to meet our needs,” he said.

Environmental groups have long criticized single-use plastic bags for being resource-intensive to produce, dangerous to wildlife, and non biodegradable — the bags will reportedly take up to 1,000 years to break down.

Ryan said the main problem in Leaf Rapids was the number of bags getting tangled in trees, or clogging up the town’s landfill.

“Even in Leaf Rapids, we put 50,000 of those bags in the landfill each year,” he said.

Reaction in the community has been largely positive, says Ryan, although some residents were concerned it could hurt business.

Cashiers at the Leaf Rapids Co-op said the cloth bags are catching on, but some shoppers still forget them at home. Some staff were also concerned that visitors to the town might be put off by the law.

Ryan said he doesn’t think the ban will hurt business, and hopes the community can “put a challenge out for other communities to do the same,” big cities included.

“Some people figure big places can’t do it,” said Ryan. “I think they can.”

lindsey.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca