Single-use items bylaw gets tossed

12-3 council vote finalizes repeal after groundswell of complaints

Calgary's single-use items bylaw was officially scrapped on Tuesday after city council voted 12-3 to formally repeal it, wrapping up a procedural process that began just two weeks after the rules took effect.

The single-use items bylaw went into effect Jan. 16 as an incentive to reduce the amount of waste ending up in Calgary landfills. The rules required food vendors to charge customers $0.15 for a paper bag or $1 for a reusable cloth bag. Those fees would have risen to $0.25 and $2, respectively, in 2025.

The bylaw also put the onus on customers to request certain food-ware items at the point of sale, including plastic utensils, napkins and cup sleeves.

But the rules immediately drew public ire. Many councillors said they received hundreds of emails that complained the bylaw was confusing, inconvenient and would only benefit businesses.

Just two weeks after the bylaw went into effect, council voted Jan. 30 to initiate its repeal process. Because it was a charter bylaw, repealing it required a 90-day notification and advertising period, as well as a public hearing.

Councillors who voted against the repeal on Tuesday were Kourtney Penner, Courtney Walcott and Gian-carlo Carra.

Ward 13 Coun. Dan Mclean called the verdict a “victory” for Calgarians.

“They've felt they haven't been heard,” he said. “They think the government and experts have been telling them what to do and how to do it. I think today, council voted (for) what Calgarians wanted to see, which was to repeal the bag bylaw.”

`TWO WEEKS IS RIDICULOUS'

Five people presented during Tuesday's public hearing. Four encouraged council to keep the bylaw, while one speaker urged council to revoke it.

One of the speakers in favour was Helga Vanthournout, an environmental sustainability consultant.

She criticized council for caving to public pressure by voting to repeal the bylaw just two weeks after it was introduced, adding that encouraging behavioural change requires far more time than that.

“Two weeks is ridiculous — that's not giving it a chance,” she said. “That's panic. And I honestly feel a lot of the reactions we heard were putting oil in the fire, rather than taking away some of the fears and helping consumers and businesses deal with this.

“I expect better from my council, to be honest.”

A last-minute presenter who said he felt compelled to speak after listening to the presenters before him was George Clarke, who argued the four people ahead of him were trying to “sway” council to consider keeping the bylaw.

“The two-week comment was unfair,” he said. “We've lived with this now for four months. Most of us were quite happy to hear it was repealed, or at least put forward for repeal for today. We've been quite upset that we've had to wait until May 7.

`EDUCATION-FIRST APPROACH' HASN'T WORKED: PENNER

After the public submissions were complete, council spent more than an hour asking questions to administration and deliberating the bylaw's merits before ultimately voting to scrap it.

Penner said the city has taken an “education-first” approach to waste management for years but that hasn't worked. The city's waste composition audits have shown that 15 million single-use items end up in the landfill every week.

“At some point, we need to have a serious conversation about how we change our behaviours, because education-first isn't working,” she said. “There are those resistant to it, so we need to do something different.”

Carra said he's heard anecdotally from business owners that the bylaw was working by forcing customers to think twice if they truly needed something that was previously provided by default.

But most on council said the bylaw missed the mark. Ward 2 Coun. Jennifer Wyness brought up Vancouver as a comparable city that has implemented similar rules to reduce waste, without being able to vouch for the measure's success.

After the meeting, she told reporters she'd like to bring forward a notice of motion in the future related to waste reduction, but that it has to be “very concise” and involve more comprehensive public consultation.

“One of the challenges this council has constantly heard is that we go out with a solution without asking Calgarians how to make this better, and then incorporate that feedback into whatever administration is thinking,” she said.