Model law may avoid mixed bag ban: Helps

CRD to consider one-size-fits-all template — with no strings attached

The Capital Regional District board will next month consider drafting a model bylaw which local municipalities could use to ban single-use plastic bags.

The City of Victoria forwarded the idea for a model bylaw to the CRD and it was unanimously endorsed by the CRD’s environmental services committee on Wednesday.

“This is in no way a call for any other municipality, or district or electoral area to eliminate plastic bags,” Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps told the committee.

A model bylaw would enable local governments wanting to implement a ban to all be on the same regulatory page, Helps said.

“This is simply a call for the staff here to draft a model bylaw as they’ve done in many other areas on many other issues so that should other local governments in the region move in this direction in the future we all … have the same rules and same regulations,” she said.

The environmental group Surfrider Foundation, which conducts beach cleanups, has lobbied for an outright ban on single-use plastic bags. It provided the CRD a draft model bylaw to use as a template.

Surfrider says that on a single Coastal Cleanup Day in 2012, more than one million plastic bags were picked up and that the bags consistently make the top10 list of items collected during beach cleanups.

The public has indicated that there’s concern about waterways being polluted by the discarded single-use bags, and 7,000 residents of the capital region have signed a petition calling for the ban, Surfrider’s Carolyn Whittaker told the committee.

Whittaker said it is “critical” that action be taken to reduce the number of single-use plastic bags going into waterways.

“We know what the problem is. The science is very sound and we’ve seen evidence that these types of bylaws and these types of legislative approaches are required in order to really enact this type of protection,” she said.

“You have an opportunity to provide leadership in this type of initiative.”

Sooke Mayor Maja Tait said her council has received presentations on the issue and a model bylaw would be useful.

Metchosin Mayor John Ranns called the model bylaw “an interesting idea” but said he’s not convinced of widespread support in the region.

Several Victoria councillors support a ban and Victoria council has decided to revisit the idea of a citywide ban in the fall.

Victoria staff estimate 17 million plastic bags are used annually by city residents. Of those bags, some 160,000 to 330,000 end up in the landfill.

While a ban would be relatively easy to implement and enforce, it would reduce consumer choice, wouldn’t address wider sustainability issues related to packaging and could result in transmission of germs via reusable bags, staff say.