Oregon introduces small fee on paper bags, eliminates single-use plastic bags

Enforced as of Jan. 1, Oregon retailers can no longer provide single-use plastic bags for customers. If customers want a bag for their items, they may purchase a paper bag, composed of at least 40% post-consumer recycled content, for a fee of at least five cents. As part of the Sustainable Shopping Initiative, the ban was approved by the Oregon legislature this past summer. 

Single-use plastic bags were already banned in the city of Portland, a ban which was first implemented Oct. 15, 2011. Portland was the first city in Oregon to enforce this policy. Yet unlike the Oregon Bag Ban, the city wide ban did not charge customers a fee to purchase a paper bag. Other cities across Oregon, however, had already implemented bag bans which charged a fee for paper bags. The bans in Eugene and Corvallis required customers to pay five cents for paper bags, and the ban in Ashland charged customers ten cents for paper bags. 

Mia Babasyan ’22,  Students Engage in Eco Defense (SEED) member and former Environment Oregon intern, commented on how the ban has the potential to educate Oregonians.

“I think sustainable shopping initiatives are great ways to get people and communities at large involved in environmental issues, and I think this is a great step in order to do that in Oregon,” Babasyan said. 

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) website explained that a few kinds of plastic bags are an exception to this fee, including “Bags designed to hold bulk items such as small hardware or for sanitary or privacy purposes, certain specialty bags, such as garment bags, and bags sold in a package for uses such as food storage, garbage or pet waste.”

Businesses may charge more than five cents for paper bags if they wish, and some local jurisdictions may require a greater charge. The paper bag fee money stays with the businesses, so they are able to recover the costs of purchasing paper bags for customers to use. Businesses must keep track of the fees they collect and, in 2024, must submit a report to the DEQ. The DEQ will then submit a report of their collected data to the Oregon legislature in 2025.

Businesses can waive the fee for paper bags to customers who use food programs such as Women, Infants & Children (WIC) vouchers or electronic benefits transfer (EBT) cards. However, waiving the fee for these customers is not required, and is left up to the business owner’s discretion. 

The DEQ explained why the state decided to adopt the ban on their website, which is a part of oregon.gov.

“When plastic bags end up in recycling bins, they can contaminate the recycling stream and endanger the safety of workers who must untangle them from recycling equipment,” their website says. “(The ban) is also a positive first step toward addressing the large amount of plastic debris in the oceans, which threatens Oregon’s marine wildlife.”

According to the Center for Biological Diversity’s website, Americans alone use 100 billion plastic bags annually, with each bag only used for 12 minutes on average. It takes a plastic bag 500 years to degrade in a landfill, with only 1% of these bags being recycled. Moreover, the website states that these bags have a large impact on wildlife, as “100,000 marine animals are killed by plastic bags annually.”

For customers who do not want to purchase a paper bag at checkout, carrying a reusable bag while shopping is the best option. Sustainability Director Amy Dvorak stressed the importance of using durable, reusable products rather than single or multi-use options.

“It’s hard to understand our environmental impacts without having a full life-cycle assessment, which is a ton of work in itself,” Dvorak said. “But, I would say probably 90% of the time, maybe more, if you’re using something reusable, you’re always having a lower impact.”

Dvorak also mentioned that if students are in need of a reusable bag, they should reach out to the Sustainability Office.

“It’d be great to know if students need reusable bags, if that’s something we can provide or support in some way that’d be good to know,” Dvorak said.

Another ban was proposed by the Sustainable Shopping Initiative, which sought to eliminate polystyrene products, commonly known as Styrofoam. Yet this bill was rejected, as three Democrats who were expected to be in favor of the ban sided with Republicans and voted against it. Needing 16 votes to pass in the Oregon Senate, it failed 15-14. 

Although there is not a statewide ban, Portland has banned polystyrene foam food containers (PSFs) since 1990. The City of Portland’s website explains why the ban is in place.

“Products made of (polystyrene) are extremely difficult to recycle and often end up as litter in our open spaces, rivers and oceans,” the website says. “They break down into small toxic pieces that wildlife and aquatic animals consume because they can’t distinguish the small pieces from food.”

The fact that the ban on polystyrene did not pass exemplifies the ongoing fight against environmental degradation. Babasyan emphasized that although the ban on plastic bags is a positive step, we must not stop there in advocating for the health of the planet.

“Personally, I think any form of single-use plastic pollution is harmful and detrimental in certain ways,” Babasyan said. “I don’t think (the ban is) the answer to solving any major issues such as climate change, but I think it’s a step in the right direction for different societies.”

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About Riley Hanna 25 Articles
Riley has been a writer and photographer for the Pioneer Log since Fall 2018, and held the position of News Editor both Spring and Fall 2019. This semester she is serving as an Arts Editor for the first time. She loves to write reviews of poetry, film and other artistic events, articles surrounding sustainability and environmental issues both locally and more broadly, and stories that amplify lesser heard voices in the Lewis & Clark and Portland communities. Her primary goals as an Arts Editor are to create a poetry section that showcases the creative writing of LC students and to continue to diversify content in the Arts section. Riley is an English Major and Environmental Studies Minor. Outside of her studies and work on the paper, she holds another job at a vegan and gluten free eatery in Northeast Portland. She is also a proud mother to two adorable kitties, Cosmo and Cupid. In her free time, Riley enjoys reading literature, writing poetry, cooking, painting, and giving her fur babies lots of love.

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