Colorado shoppers will continue to be offered the choice of “paper or plastic” after the Senate on Tuesday voted down a bill that would have banned plastic bags in grocery and big-box stores by the summer of 2012.
“This is an issue I believe the marketplace can ultimately take care of through private-sector education,” said Sen. Mark Scheffel, R-Parker. “We don’t need government to get involved in this.”
Sen. Jennifer Veiga, D-Denver, sponsored Senate Bill 156 and argued it was an important environmental-protection measure.
She said plastic bags contribute to landfill waste, soak up valuable petroleum used in their production, are rarely recycled and kill wildlife when they end up as litter. Coloradans consume about 600 million plastic bags a year, she said.
Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, repeated the criticisms of the bill he had in committee, arguing that it would probably cause increased use of paper grocery bags, which he said take more energy to produce and recycle and suck up more landfill space per bag.
“If you are voting for this bill because you think it is environmentally friendly, it is not,” Harvey said. “. . . The environmental hazards of going to paper bags are far greater for our society than using plastic bags.”
Veiga countered that eliminating plastic bags will cause many people to switch to reusable bags and said paper bags are more often recycled than plastic bags, for which she said recycling is cost prohibitive.
The bill died on a stand-up, sit-down vote, with at least a half dozen Democrats voting against it. Sen. Dan Gibbs, D-Silverthorne, said he voted against the bill because he was uncertain of the unintended consequences that could result from banning plastic bags.
“I want to see more incentives for folks to bring in their own bags rather than an outright ban now,” he said.
The idea for the bill came from a group of students at Kent Denver School, in suburban Denver, who formed a school group to come up with ways to reduce plastic bag consumption.
A handful from the school watched the debate on the bill from the Senate’s upstairs gallery Tuesday. Afterward, they said they were disappointed but not dissuaded.
“Now we know the things that we need to further look into and come back with next year,” said sophomore Krista D’Alessandro.
