Talks about environmental concerns surrounding single plastic bag use have made its way to the County of Grande Prairie, and councillors are looking to continue that discussion. Technical Services Director Jennifer Besinger gave a presentation to council recently, which included talks about bans that are already in place in other municipalities.
Besinger says while the discussion didn’t specifically call for a ban on single-use plastic, councillors across the board were interested in hearing more and sharing what they already know.
“They would need a collaborative approach to move forward with something of this nature. They did choose to provide this information to their inter-municipal partners for their meeting in the fall.”
The federal government recently announced a plan to ban single-use plastics as early as 2021, including items like grocery bags and straws.
Besinger says the research used as part of the presentation came from a number of sources, including the reasoning other municipalities, like the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, used to put bans in place. She says a lot of comparisons between paper and plastic bags were cites.
“Paper bags take more resources and energy to create than a plastic bag, [but] the trouble comes on the end of life, where plastic is more environmentally detrimental than paper.”
Councillors voted to add the topic to the agenda to the upcoming multi-municipal meeting in October.