Bag ban moves ahead in Portland
July 15 2010 | Activism, Jim's Blog,
by Jim
The front row of Portland's Council chambers, complete with a bunch of bag monsters. Nice visual.
Yet the story is larger than even this photo would suggest. The Oregon crew brought together 6,100 petition signatures, a sign-on letter with the support of 70 local businesses, enviro groups and neighborhood associations with the common goal of radically decreasing our use of single-use plastic bags.
These collective efforts resulted with an announcement from Portland's Mayor, Sam Adams, that the city plans to release a draft ordinance later this week to ban single-use plastic bags.
If you missed the video of Mayor Adams talking about this subject check that out here.
The single-use plastic bag issue is a huge one. Approximately 100,000,000,000 petroleum-based bags are used each year in the US (requiring 12,000,000 barrels of oil). Those are massive numbers. The real tragedy is the fact that only about 5% of these are recycled. The remaining bags just create a mess.
What I love about this effort is that so many people came together to make it happen. Businesses, environmental groups, and people from a variety of backgrounds all pushed forward together for a future in Portland that will not be littered with plastic bags.
Kudos to all the people involved in this effort.
photo: Stiv Wilson
