The Chicago Committee on Health and Environmental Protection hopes to approve a citywide plastic bag ban, in efforts to improve the city’s pollution levels.
The vote was delayed until April 24. If the vote passes committee, it could move on to consideration by the City Council proper by the end of the month.
Of course, like everything in Chicago, it’s not nearly that simple.
According to the Chicago Tribune, 28 aldermen have signed a letter calling for “additional time to study the impacts of such a ban on Chicago’s retailers, consumers and workforce.”
Should they get their way, the committee vote could be delayed for up to several months. It remains unclear, though, if the 28 protesters are trying to merely stall the bill’s passage or kill it entirely. Many of them have wards bordering the suburbs and/or with struggling small business sectors, and fear that the ban could kill jobs and local businesses.
A 2012 study by the National Center for Policy Analysis supports that fear. It found that the 2011 bag ban in LA County resulted in an average 5.7% decrease in private retail profits in the affected areas, and a 10% spike in unemployment.
Indeed, several businesses here have already voiced their concern. Savido Guzman, manager of the Golden Nugget Diner on Pulaski and Diversey, believes that the bag ban would negatively affect the restaurant.
“If this passes, we’ll probably lose a lot of carry-out business,” Guzman said. “And buying paper bags would be very expensive. It may not affect us … as much as a grocery store or something, but it will still hurt.”
Others believe that, economics and ecology aside, the ban is simply too impractical.
“How will people manage around here?” Ritesh Pagat, recent immigrant to the city and manager of an Avondale 7/11 asked. “So many people here walk; what good is it to be (environmentally) clean if no one can carry their groceries?”
The protesting aldermen’s motivations, however, may run beyond concern for small business.
According to the Tribune, the protesters’ letter was distributed to the media by the controversial American Progressive Bag Alliance, a group of plastic bag manufacturers with a shaky reputation at best.
The APBA was founded in 2005 by some of the largest plastic bag producers in America (Advance Polybag, Inc., Hilex Poly, etc.) and coordinates opposition to bag bans across the nation. It is a known lobby group with the American Chemistry Council, a trade coalition representing American chemical corporations.
The Center for Media and Democracy, an online watchdog group, has lambasted both groups for using PR tactics similar to those used by 1950s-era tobacco companies. The 2009 vote in Washington DC to levy a tax on plastic bags is particularly infamous.
ACC Spokesperson Shari Jackson said, “We think (bag bans) are the wrong approach. They have not been shown to work. We have been working on recycling programs. They have had a better effect in managing bad waste than any fee or tax could.”
This was despite the fact that many of the “recycled” bags had made their way into the Anacostia River, and, according to a report by the DC Department of the Environment, accounted for more than 50% of its inorganic waste content. The same report also blamed plastic bags for dwindling wildlife numbers in the region.
Meanwhile George Cardenas and Joe Moreno, twelfth and first sponsors of the ban vote respectively, continue to emphasize the ban’s ecological benefit, and have tried to address the economic arguments the APBA and protesting aldermen bring up. They have proposed the compromise of letting small businesses be exempt from the ban, and giving larger retailers like Wal-Mart and Jewel a whole year to make the transition.
“It’s a good gesture for small business. It’s a good compromise. You’ve got to be able to compromise,” Cardenas said in a Sun-Times interview.
But most opponents of the ban are doing anything but that.
“I’m not saying slow down. I’m saying no way,” Alderman Nick Sposato of the northwestern 36th ward said. “You’re making it tough on (shop owners) as it is with the water tax, the gas tax.”
Undoubtedly the proponents of the vote have a long fight ahead. Though, if the bag ban or bag tax ultimately passes, Chicago will join cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, London and Belfast that have recently implemented similar policies.