But on Friday, the bottom ripped out of efforts in Salem to either ban plastic bags outright or set an ambitious plastic recycling benchmark backed by a prohibition. The six lawmakers who tried to lead the Legislature toward restrictions on plastic bags conceded in a written statement: "It appears the time for a statewide solution to this issue has not yet arrived. But this issue is not going away. We are not going away. And these bags aren't going away. They will be around for a thousand years."
Well, it'd be nice to come up with an Oregon solution between now and then. We're not excited about what comes next, a grab-bag of local plastics laws, with Portland first out of the gate. Mayor Sam Adams promised he'd respond to a failure in Salem with a citywide ban on plastic bags starting next January. After Friday's announcement that the bag bill was a dead letter in the Legislature, Adams indicated that the city would go forward with its ban.
That's a discouraging turn of events. For a time it looked like Oregon might be the first place to make a serious run at recycling of plastics, not just bags, but all kinds of plastic litter and waste now tossed into ditches and landfills. But then it all fell apart. The plastic-bag industry had no intention of backing up its rhetoric about helping lead a recycling effort in Oregon. And not enough lawmakers stepped up to support a more creative alternative to a statewide ban.
So instead of leading, Oregon will follow places such as San Francisco with isolated city prohibitions that make trouble for retailers dealing with different regulations, confuse consumers and offer token environmental gains.
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