No plastic bag and straw ban for now – but councillors are supportive of the idea.
The discussion during the June 5 council meeting was promoted by a letter writing campaign by Grade 2 students at Garibaldi Highlands Elementary, who asked the mayor to “stop letting companies use plastic straws because it is very bad for the environment.”
“I agree with them and we love it when kids send us advocacy letters,” said Mayor Patricia Heintzman, who suggested referring the idea to District staff.
Coun. Ted Prior proposed that council immediately pass a motion banning plastic bags and straws.
“Do you remember when the highschool kids came in to talk about banning plastic bags?” he asked. “We thanked them for coming in, they came in front of council and wrote letters and then we did nothing. Now it’s straws. I don’t know too many places right now that aren’t banning straws,” he said.
“Why don’t we just do it?” he said.
District staff provided the answer to that question.
Chris Wyckham, director of engineering, said while he absolutely agreed with encouraging people to use less plastic to help the environment, banning single-use plastic overnight in Squamish would be difficult.
“I’m really supportive of the passion our school children bring to this, and hopefully into their families and the community in general. [However,] I am concerned about trying to implement a ban on plastic bags and plastic straws for two reasons,” he said.
The first was limited staff time, although Wyckham suggested putting it on a list for future initiatives. The second concern was the legality – Victoria is currently facing legal challenges over their plastic bag ban.
“My recommendation would be that we encourage people and businesses to move voluntarily to other alternatives to plastics, but at this time that it not become a ban in Squamish,” he said.
Coun. Jason Blackman-Wulff supported passing Prior’s Tuesday night motion.
As a compromise, Coun. Peter Kent suggested that banning single-use plastics overnight would have an impact on businesses and residents, but setting a future date for that decision would allow people to respond to the idea.
“I don’t think you can throw down a hard date without affecting business, but we could say we intend to implement one, and set a date further down the road,” he said.
Coun. Karen Elliott suggested more education around the District’s zero-waste policies might be appropriate, if not a full-on ban.
“These kids have a really great point, I think they are trying to be advocates, and I think we might be falling down in our role to support them in doing that,” said Elliott. “There’s more we could do on the education piece, and I think that is a budget discussion.”
Councillors seemed mostly on board with Prior’s motion after a spirited discussion on Tuesday, but in the end chief administrative officer Linda Glenday had to insist that there is no current capacity to deliver a ban.
“It’s not a little thing to pass a motion to ban straws and plastic bags and have staff take that on,” she said. “It’s a much larger project. I have to caution you to pass a motion like this.”
Prior said he was happy the discussion took place, but agreed to repeal his motion.
Instead, council agreed to support the idea in the future, bring education ideas forward for the 2019 budget and direct staff to consider adding it to the Zero Waste Strategy.
