Reuseable Bag Campaign
Sustainable Bainbridge is working in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce to work on paper and plastic bag reduction. Recently, the City of Bainbridge Island passed a resolution recognizing April 19, 2008 as “Bring Your Bags Day” on Bainbridge Island.
History of the Campaign
We started meeting last year in the spring of 2007. We decided it was important to have stakeholders involved from the start to hear their concerns and ideas. At our first meeting managers from Safeway, Town & Country, former councilmen Bill Knobloch, and many other local business owners were present. We met once a month for many months and brainstormed many ideas.
In the end we decided that it was best to make the effort grow organically and not to mandate (as San Francisco) or impose a “bag tax” (as Ireland). Our goal was to help islanders get into the habit of using reusable bags when they shop, not just in the grocery stores, but for all their shopping, in order to reduce plastic and paper bag consumption.
In the summer of 2007 Town & Country launched a wooden nickel bag project that was highly successful. Their bag consumption went down 15%. Safeway also started selling reusable bags at the check out stands and their bag usage went down drastically as well. The new Safeway manager could not believe how many people brought their own bag compared to other stores he had been working at. Go Bainbridge!
*Americans consume more than 10 billion paper bags each year. Some 14 million trees are cut down annually for paper bag production. The U.S. uses 100 billion plastic bags annually, made from an estimated 12 million barrels of oil. (Washington Post, 2007)