Beta videos, eight-track tapes, the manual typewriter, and the plastic shopping bag. They all went – or in the case of the latter – is going the way of the dodo bird.

Extinct.

A worldwide movement to ban the plastic shopping sack – if not in the bag – is certainly gathering momentum. It has arrived in both North America and the Kootenays.

Leaf Rapids, Manitoba became the first Canadian community to ban plastic shopping bags on April 2. The West Kootenay city of Rossland was vying for that distinction, but instead voted to have a voluntary ban. (Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?)

Proponents of plastic bag bans say they’re a blight on the landscape, often blowing along roadsides, getting stuck in trees and lodged against fences. Bags also find their way into waterways and end up in the ocean, killing fish and sea birds that mistakenly ingest the bags.

A tiny town of only 539 people, Leaf Rapids – which was already charging a three-cent levy on plastic bags – handed out 5,000 reusable bags when its outright ban local bylaw 462 came into effect. Situated 75 kilometres north of Winnipeg, Leaf Rapids’ retailers will not be allowed to sell or give away plastic shopping bags. Municipal administrator Bond Ryan reckons 50,000 plastic bags will be eliminated in the first year alone.

Estimates of annual worldwide plastic bag use range from 500 billion to one trillion (that’s a million squared or 12 zeros). Bag recycling programs exist through various grocery stores in Canada but in Peterborough, the first Canadian community to implement a comprehensive bag recycling program, the bag recycling rate is only 22 percent.

The idea of a voluntary city-wide ban was brought to Rossland council on March 12 by local resident and musician Tracey Saxby, who wanted to emulate the success of 14 towns in her native Australia that are now plastic bag free.

Saxby presented a video and Power Point presentation on the initiative. She requested council write a letter of endorsement, fund an educational component, change to biodegradable blue bags for garbage collection and consider passing a bylaw banning use of plastic bags in Rossland.

“While recycling is fantastic, what we really should be focusing on is reducing our waste,” she said. “We’re hoping to tackle over packaging in general.”

While she hoped her adopted home of Rossland would claim Canada’s plastic bag ban crown, Saxby was happy that Leaf Rapids had started the ban rolling. She added that people from other BC communities have asked for information from her not-for-profit group Greener Footprints.

The Kootenay Co-op grocery retailer in Nelson was so impressed with Saxby’s efforts, it has just awarded her group a $500 grant from their annual environmental fund.

In BC, Tofino, Duncan and Victoria on Vancouver Island are considering plastic bag bans. Other places with existing plastic bag bans include Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Zanzibar, Rwanda, and Taiwan.

Central Okanagan Regional District added all #1 to 7 household plastic containers, including shopping bags and shrink wrap, to their blue bag curbside recycling program in February.

San Francisco became the first U.S. city to adopt a plastic bag ban in March. The ban was actually a Plan B after efforts failed to get a 15-cent tax on bags approved.

That idea borrowed from the Irish, where a 15-cent tax was imposed in March 2002 to curb the country’s annual consumption of 1.2 billion plastic bags. The “plastax” resulted in a 90 to 95 percent drop in plastic bag use and generated $9.6 million in its first year – money that the government put into a green fund for environmental initiatives. In addition, retailers in Ireland saved $50 million a year by not having to buy bags for their customers.

Ireland’s Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Dick Roche, announced recently that the environmental levy on plastic shopping bags will increase to 22 cents per bag effective July 1, 2007 because plastic bag usage increased to 30 bags per capita in 2006 from 21 when the tax was first imposed.

In California, about 20 billion plastic grocery bags are used annually. Of those, only between one and four percent get recycled. Two other California cities, Berkeley and Santa Cruz are considering bans similar to San Francisco’s. Los Angeles is also studying plastic bag alternatives.

Toronto, where plastic bag recycling won’t be available until 2008 and residents use up to 800 million annually, is considering a tax of 25 cents a bag.

Quoted in an article by Alan Weisman in the May/June 2007 issue of Orion magazine, University of Plymouth marine biologist Richard Thompson says plastics haven’t been around long enough for humans to know how long they’ll last or what will happen to them. Some estimates say plastic will take 1,000 years to disintegrate. Thompson tied some plastic bags to moorings in Plymouth Harbour to see if the bags would degrade in salt water.

“A year later you could still carry groceries in them,” said Thompson.

Captain Charles Moore of Long Beach, California has the plastic horror story to top all others. He discovered in 1997 a patch of the Pacific Ocean known as the North Pacific Central Gyre, a spiralling sump where an estimated 3 million tons of plastic – including cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags – cover 10 million square miles, almost the size of Africa.

Plastic bags, like diamonds, may last forever, but it’s time to make them a thing of the past. Make every effort to get your community on the ban wagon.

RESOURCES – It takes about 430,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million plastic bags.

One estimate puts the amount of plastic flotsam per square kilometre of ocean at 17,760 pieces.

In Canada, Mountain Equipment Co-op and the Kootenay Co-op have been using starch-based Bio Bags that have the texture of rolled-out cotton candy. The British grocery chain Sainbury’s is providing compostable packaging on store-brand products.

Committed to reducing the number of plastic shopping bags ending up as waste in landfills, stores where President’s Choice products are sold have produced Canada’s greenest shopping bag made from 85 percent recycled post-consumer soft drink and water bottles.

Ecobags.com is trying to clean up the planet one bag at a time.

The Earth Resource Foundation has launched a Campaign Against the Plastic Plague (CAPP).

The Canadian Plastics Industry Association is trying to keep up with the opposition to plastic bags through the defensive website myplasticbags.ca.

Michael Jessen is a BC based environmental writer and consultant.  His business Zero Waste Solutions has an award winning web site.