Lake Oswego Bans Plastic Bags, Second Clackamas City To Do So

LAKE OSWEGO, OR – The city of Lake Oswego made a big deal about going "Bag to the Future," their campaign to convince residents to get behind a plastic bag ban in the city. It paid off and the city council adopted the bag ban at their meeting on Tuesday.

The ban doesn't go into effect immediately. Retailers have up to one year to make the adjustment. The city says that residents are already well on their way in making the shift from paper to plastic.

Lake Oswego became the second city in Clackamas County – after Milwaukie – to adopt a ban.

Get all the latest information on what's happening in your community by signing up for Patch's newsletters and breaking news alerts

City officials contacted the six major groceries in town – Albertsons, New Seasons, Palisades, Safeway, 365, and Zupans – and of the four that replied, Albertsons and Safeway didn't share data with the city, Lake Oswego determined that while 57,200 plastic bags were being given out each year, it paled in comparison to the 1,196,00 paper bags that were handed out.

The ban is focused on grocery stores bags and there are excpetions written into the ordinance, including:

• Bulk food, meat, or produce bags
• Pharmacy prescription bags
• Dry cleaning bags
• Bags used to carry out liquid takeout items
• Product bags (ziplocs, poop bags, etc)

The city is also trying to discourage people from using paper bags by imposing fees on paper bags at the supermarket.

Lake Oswego says that they " do not want to push consumers from one type of single use bag (plastic) to another (paper).

The city points out while paper is recyclable, the market for recycle paper has dried up since China ended their decades-old practice of accepting recyclables from the United States.

According to the city, while Lake Oswego is not the first city to have this bag – in addition to Milwaukie, Portland, Salem, and Eugene have adopted bans – their ordinance is different in several ways, including:

• A 10 cent pass through fee for paper bags at retailers larger than 10,000 square feet. Most cities have a 5 cent fee, or no fee.
• A strict definition of “reusable” that does not allow for thicker plastic bags.
• The ban applies to all retailers, including restaurants and all City facilities, Farmers Market, and events.
• Smaller retailers (less than 10,000 square feet) have the option to charge a minimum of 10 cents for a paper bag, at their discretion.

Lake Oswego says that since the ordinance was introduced, they collected response from retailers and the public.

The retail response was fairly underwhelming – of the 335 retailers contacted, only one got back to them though, they point out, it was a positive response.

The feedback from the public was much stronger. The city says that 291 people responded. Of those, 257 were in favor the ordinance, 10 favored the ban but did not support the paper bag fee, and 24 were against the ordinance overall.

Image via City of Lake Oswego.