This week, the Boulder City Council will take up its newest incarnation of a rule designed to drastically reduce the amount of plastic bag waste in the city.

First approached to ban single-use plastic bags by local high school students, the council settled on a fee of 20 cents per plastic or paper bag at food retailers such as grocery stores and Target. After tackling that idea, the council members decided to lower the fee -- for plastic and paper -- to 10 cents per bag starting in July 2013.

We feel they got half-way there.

The Camera supports a single use plastic bag ban at food retailers, and no fees on paper bags.

Yes, producing anything (including the food and the food containers being purchased at the stores) creates waste, and paper bags are not without their costs to the environment. They also don't take 1,000 years to disintegrate in landfills, and they aren't creating their own little kingdoms in our oceans. While some people work to recycle disposable bags, it's not a practice that has resonated with most shoppers. A Waste Composition Study showed that there were 781 tons of plastic bag waste in Boulder County in 2010.

Dozens of municipalities have simply banned plastic bags, and others have enforced fees. Like Boulder's proposed fees, most are decried as sort of a back-door tax shared between the local governments and the stores. (Which, of course, everyone can avoid by simply bringing in their own bag.)


In Aspen, plastic bags are banned, and a paper bag comes with a 20-cent fee. The grocery stores keep a portion of the fee and the rest goes to the city for waste reduction programs.

But we think the plastic bag ban in Boulder will go far in reducing waste, so after that, we say let the businesses make their own decisions based on what they want to offer their customers.

For instance, Whole Foods has no plastic bags, and will knock 10 cents off a bill or donate it to schools if you bring in your own reusable bag. Alfalfa's has no plastic bags and will offer 5-cent discounts to shoppers with reusable bags.

Austin, Texas became one of the latest towns to mull over the change, and the first major city in Texas to do so.

Like Boulder, Austin city leaders mulled a 10-cent fee on all bags before scrapping that idea and banning all bags, including paper. Shoppers starting in March will need to use their own bags or buy reusable bags inside stores for their goods.

San Francisco has one of the largest and longest bag bans in the United States, being played out over time. Starting in 2007, large grocery stores and pharmacies had to stop issuing plastic bags; the next step will be a 10-cent charge for non-plastic bags. And next year, the ban will extend to restaurants, too.

In reviewing all of these options, we think the best solution to reduce plastic bags, allow flexibility for shoppers without their own bags, and give grocery stores the ability to serve their customers in the way they see fit is to simply ban the single-use plastic bags at food retailers.

-- Erika Stutzman, for

the Camera editorial board