Portland’s Rainbow City Council Bans Plastic Bags; Threatens Future Bans

July 21, 2011

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The Portland City Council adopted by a 5-nothing vote an ethylene bag ban at only large supermarkets. The ban allows granola stores, newspapers, dog poop and fresh veggie bags to stay. For now. The ban on the bags goes into effect October 15.
Pleased with himself for banning a product he personally doesn’t like, Mayor Sam Adams threatened more bans in the future,

“This is another step in a longer journey,” Mayor Sam Adams said before casting the final of five “yes” votes this afternoon.

Adams’ previous ban proposals have included a 5 cent tax on paper bags, so Portlanders will wonder if that’s coming next.

Adams based his product ban on his claims of:

  • Plastic bags being a large part of the “Swirling mass of garbage twice the size of Texas off the Oregon Coast.”
  • Ethylene bags being “plastic.”
  • Ethylene being a foreign based petroleum product.
  • Ethylene bags being found in the stomachs of fish when when he was a boy in Newport.
  • Ethylene bags being a huge littering problem.
  • Ethylene bags getting caught up in recycling machines.
  • Ethylene bags produced by a Texas firm that he didn’t like very much.
  • Getting a photo op with the “Bag Monster.”
With the exceptions of the last three items all of the mayor’s objections to the bags were debunked and outed as outright fraudulent data, but he didn’t care and neither, it appears, did the Rainbow City Council.
In the meantime, Portland has had three shootings in the last 24 hours, a gang war is apparently underway in Portland, 40,000 jobs have fled the inner city in the last decade, the city has $3,000,000,000.00 in unfunded liabilities, the unemployment rate is among the highest in the nation, Portland’s housing has seen the fourth worst drop in the country, and even at that rate affordability is tough.
Under Sam Adams’ leadership we have now conquered the plastic bag.
Enjoy a victory which is as thin as the film on the bag. 

Mayor Adams on Single-Use Plastic Bags from Mayor Sam Adams on Vimeo.

http://www.portlandonline.com/mayor/bagban/bagban-faqs.pdf
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com