Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?

This story was originally published in The Westshore newsletter, May 19, 2022. 

The last time I was in Sooke, it was, unsurprisingly, a windy day. While I crossed the parking lot, a white flash caught my eye. It was a plastic bag lifted by the wind.

“Nothing in life is as free as a plastic bag in the wind,” said a man in passing. We both watched the litter freewheel up and over a nearby roof.

It might look like freedom to him, but Sooke would prefer its town to be free from plastic bags from now on. On Sunday a bylaw takes effect that prohibits plastic checkout bags in stores and mandates a $0.25 fee for paper bags or $2 for cloth bags. The bylaw, passed last October, is part of Sooke’s effort to reduce community waste.

It only applies to the checkout bags, not for other single-use items like thin produce bags, or the wrappers around plastic cutlery. The bylaw also doesn’t affect that plastic cutlery, nor does it ban straws, stir sticks, foodservice containers, or ring carriers. Each of those items has a target on its back from the federal government, which is working towards a nationwide ban. It’s part of a national goal to have zero plastic waste by 2030.

Plastic packaging, which includes plastic bags, makes up a full 47% of plastic waste in Canada. As much as we promote recycling, it’s practically impossible to fully recycle the myriad plastics that go into packaging. A zip-lock bag, for example, is made of two types of plastic: the soft film of the bag, and a different hard plastic for the zip. To be recycled, those two parts have to be separated, and nobody’s got time for that.

So cutting single-use plastics altogether is the focus. Sooke isn’t the first to ban plastic checkout bags; Victoria, Saanich, Esquimalt, View Royal, and many cities around BC also have restrictions on plastic checkout bags.

What do you think about municipal policies like this? Should the rest of the Westshore do it, too? Let me know at [email protected].