Plastic Bag Ban Heads to Kodiak Island Borough Assembly

Kayla Desroches/KMXT

The single-use plastic bag ban continues to inch forward.

The Kodiak Island Borough Solid Waste Advisory Board, or SWAB, held a regular meeting Monday night where members of the public spoke about the distribution of plastic bags in Kodiak stores and the possible ban.

So far, those to attend meetings have been in favor, but one dissenter did step forward.

Janet Wente said she recycles, composts, and tries to be environmentally conscious, but she’s wary about a total ban.

She said she formerly ran an art gallery, Northern Exposure, and still does as a hobby.

“I mean, there are certain things that have to go in plastic bags.  Certain things like if I sell art to somebody and they’re on a cruise ship and they’re walking down the street, what are they gonna put it in? Because with a paper bag, by the time they get there in the rain, it’ll be out of the paper bag.”

Wente suggested exemptions to the ban in certain situations. And the draft ordinance does include exemptions, like bags used for frozen foods and meats that might drip or takeaway bags.

She also brought up the role of education in preventing the wide-spread littering of plastic bags, which has been a big drive behind the ban. That issue of litter was what another business representative brought up at the meeting.

Sutliff True Value Manager David Zimmerman said he had mixed feelings at first because paper bags cost twice as much as plastic bags.

“But as the wind started blowing today and I was outside tying up trees so they didn’t blow over like they always do, I noticed our plastic bags blowing across the parking lot and up over the coffee shop and down the road, so I guess in general I would support a plastic bag ban.”

Zimmerman and Wente appeared to be the only two business representatives at the meeting, although SWAB had reached out to multiple stores.

For the rest of the meeting, SWAB mainly focused on the draft ordinance it would present to the assembly. Some communities have banned both plastic and paper bags, but in reviewing the draft, SWAB decided to stick to the plastic ban and keep paper as an option.

Assemblyman Matt Van Daele, who is not a board member but had offered to help write the ordinance, said they’d decided to push the effective date from January 1 to Valentine’s Day.

“Just so that we can help with education, outreach efforts, and we thought that February 14 would be a good one because instead of framing this as taking away people’s freedoms, this would kind of love Kodiak type thing, and we’re doing this to make Kodiak better instead of being big, bad government to take away more freedoms.”

The next step is to present the ordinance to the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly, but SWAB agreed that it would loop in the City of Kodiak, especially since many stores are inside city limits.