Plastics Recycling Update Magazine: Austin study details bag ban's consequences

Austin study details bag ban's consequences

By Jared Paben, Plastics Recycling Update

August 12, 2015

Austin's ban on single-use plastic bags has reduced the number of bags in roadside litter, but too many reusable bags are landing in recycling bins.

That's according to a report by Austin Resource Recovery (ARR), the city department overseeing waste management in Texas' capital.

"There's a lot of good news in the litter assessment that (ARR employee) Aaron Waters did. We feel there's a significant litter reduction. We feel that the effects of the ordinance that were intended are actually there," Bob Gedert, director of Austin Resource Recovery, told Plastics Recycling Update. "But what his study also proved was some unintended consequences – what I call learned lessons – that may require us to modify the ordinance."

Austin, with a population 913,000 residents, implemented its ban on single-use plastic bags in March 2013. In complying with the law, many stores switched to paper bags, while some switched to thicker, 4 mil plastic bags, mostly made of HDPE with some made from LDPE. Four mils is four one-thousanths of an inch. Thin grocery store bags are 0.5 mils. 

Litter composition studies in Fort Worth, Texas, and Austin indicate the ordinance is reducing single-use bag litter. In Fort Worth, which does not have a ban on single-use plastic bags, the bags made up about 0.12 percent of roadside litter. A cleanup in Austin earlier this year showed its rate was 0.03 percent.

Gedert estimates the ordinance has reduced plastic bags going to landfill by about 85 percent. But the study showed residents aren't reusing the thicker bags as many times as they could, and they're putting them into recycling bins instead. The materials recovery facilities serving Austin generally landfill bags they receive.

"The reusable bags are too young, too new to assume that they had 100 uses before they were disposed," Gedert said.

After the ordinance went into effect, an examination of the recycling stream arriving at the MRFs showed reusable plastic bags made up about 0.05 percent of the recycling stream, while single-use ones made up only 0.004 percent, according to the report. Removing the reusable bags from the recycling stream could prevent 23 tons of film from entering the MRFs, nearly the same weight as the single-use bags that were removed from the stream when the ban went into effect, according to the report.

The report recommended the city eliminate the 4 mil bags, but Gedert said he won't recommend that to City Council because they're so much more affordable than cloth bags. Instead, he wants to explore alternative ways the bags could be designed to signal to consumers they should reuse them, instead of recycling them.

The paper bags allowed under the ordinance are also incapable of being reused more than a handful of times because they're thin and tear easily. Gedert may also recommend to the council changing the paper bag specs so they're more durable and can be reused more times, he said.

"My interest is to use the report as lessons learned for the improvement of the Austin ordinance," Gedert said, "as well as that other cities can learn from our experience and design their ordinances in a strong way."

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