Should Wichita ban single-use plastic bags? Here’s what a city task force recommends

A task force appointed to study how single-use plastic bags affect Wichita’s environment and economy is calling for a grassroots effort to phase out the use of plastic bags.

Wichitans have thrown away an estimated 462.8 million single-use plastic bags since the task force was created in January 2020, member Brett Prather told the City Council at a workshop Tuesday.

“What we’re saying is yes, we do have a problem, we felt like, within the city that we need to address,” Prather said.

The City Council does not plan to take immediate action on a potential ban. City Manager Robert Layton suggested during the workshop that the task force report be reviewed by the Sustainability Integration Board.

In a 2021 University of Kansas Medical School survey, 71% of Wichita respondents said they supported a plastic bag ban. As an alternative to an outright ban, 67% said they strongly supported a 5-cent tax for single-use bags and 51% said they strongly supported a 10-cent tax to discourage relying on plastic.

California, Hawaii, Maine, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have all enacted bans on plastic bags while 17 states have barred municipalities from banning single-use bags. In February, a Kansas Senate committee rejected a proposed law that would have banned plastic bag bans at the local level.

A California study found that within six months of banning single-use bags, 86% of shoppers had taken to bringing their own reusable bags to the store.

“What we’re finding in talking to the communities, it’s just a change of habit,” Prather said. “The first few weeks or months, there’s some wailing and gnashing of teeth as we call it, but after that, it’s the transition to a habit where people get used to bringing their own bags — and we’re talking cloth bags here — and it becomes a way of life.”

He said any long-term solution should include a reusable cloth bag distribution program to aid shoppers in the transition away from single-use bags.

Across the U.S., 102 billion plastic bags are thrown away annually, Prather said. Those bags don’t easily break down in landfills, and when they do, they create microplastics that are ingested by fish and birds and ultimately passed on to humans through the food chain.

The task force also found that transporting such a high volume of plastic bags to landfills can be costly. Based on their analysis, Wichita could save $309,632 in hauling fees if plastic bags were eliminated.

Sheila Regehr, corporate affairs manager for Dillons, told council members that the grocery store chain is in the process of phasing out plastic bags by 2025.

Mayor Brandon Whipple said he has concerns about how taking action on plastic bags could disrupt local businesses.

“My concern with utilizing a legislative tool such as an ordinance is how that interrupts businesses like Kroger,” Whipple said. “You’re already on track to eliminate plastics or severely reduce the amount of plastics by 2025. If we passed an ordinance requiring you to do that in three weeks, that’s likely going to be an incredible disruptor, and I don’t know if that helps the overarching goal here, which is to have a responsible path towards reducing plastics without causing confusion or a backlash in the community.”

Prather said that by the task force’s count, at least 35 local businesses have already stopped using plastic bags.

This story was originally published February 28, 2023 at 5:09 PM.