Soldotna Tightens Local Plastic Bag Ban

Soldotna stregthened their plastic bag ban in an effort to protect wildlife and water.

Brian Yurasits | Unsplash.com

Last week, Soldotna’s City Council closed a loophole in their plastic bag ban. The ordinance was sponsored by Council Member Jordan Chilson.

In 2018, the city passed a ban on grocery bags that were thinner than 2.25mil in an effort to reduce single use plastic pollution. Unfortunately, some stores just switched to using bags that were thicker than 2.25mil. Theoretically, people would use these bags more than once, but most of the time people were throwing them out after a single use, and it was just producing additional plastic pollution.

In theory, this bag is reusable and then recyclable, but in practice it is single use.Photo by PD | Public Domain

We know that plastic pollution is a big issue in Alaska. Last summer, we surveyed 39 water sources in Southcentral Alaska including several locations on the Kenai Peninsula. Every single source had microplastics. It’s likely that the atmosphere and ocean currents sweep some of that plastic pollution in from outside of Alaska, but some of it comes from our own use. The City Council looked at that data and decided to tighten up the bad ban.

Now, the ordinance makes the definitions much tighter. A reusable bag must be designed to withstand repeated use, and must be machine washable or otherwise able to be cleaned and disinfected.

Will it work?

This is great news. There is a fair bit of data that plastic bag bans work, and our calculator shows that a strong plastic bag ban in Soldotna will result in 1,337,328 fewer single-use plastic bags used each year. For the visual, those bags would stretch 232 miles laid side to side. Eliminating those bags will save 6740 gallons of oil needed to produce them.

What next?

If Alaska followed Soldotna’s example and passed a statewide ban, the single-use bags eliminated could circle the Earth 1.51 times laid side by side.

 

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