Plastic Bags a Focus at Reno Green Summit

Epic, mountainous, frontier wilderness landscapes like Reno often end up being studies in contradictions. At one end they attract the gun-totin’ tobacco-chompin’ Gamblin’-Men who dream of the old cowboy days (see: my grandparents), and at the other they attract tree-hugging eco-crusaders who fall in love with the city’s clean air and forests and relatively unadulterated mountain views (see: its college students and attendees of its annual Green Summit). Two years in the running now, the main focus of Reno’s Green Summit is to get its residents involved in dialogue regarding plans to reduce emissions, improve energy consumption and efficiency, improve sustainability, and develop other ideas for protecting the environment. This year, one of the major points on the board will be the ubiquitous plastic bag and what can be done about it.

Options ranging from encouraging recycling bins in stores to an eventual ban on the plastic bag will be presented to local residents at Reno’s second annual Green Summit on Saturday.

Jason Geddes, city energy administrator, said the bags, bike lanes and new Sierra building guidelines could drive attendance past the nearly 400 who attended the first summit last year. How residents view these issues will be presented to the City Council later for possible action.

The summit will also touch on hot-button issues like green building practices, expanding bike lanes, and ideas for programs getting high school youth involved in activism and conservation. The bag issue, however, is currently taking top billing and plans for discussion address many different options to bring before city council.

Reno Mayor Bob Cashell got the debate going last winter when he put recycling or banning plastic bags on the agenda. The council formed a working group, including local business interests and residents, that recommends four alternatives:

# Encourage large stores to voluntarily recycle plastic bags with results reported annually to the city. This option has been considered or imposed in Annapolis, Md.; Austin, Texas; Los Angeles and Rhode Island.

# Require large stores to have plastic-bag collection sites. Annual reporting would be required, and tougher measures would be imposed in June 2010 if goals aren’t met. This has been considered or imposed in New York, Phoenix and California.

# Require large stores to offer a percentage of compostable plastic, recyclable paper or reusable bags. The percentage would increase each year for five years to 100 percent. Fines would be imposed on those who don’t comply. This has been considered or imposed in San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., and Fairfax, Calif.

# Reno resident Marie Gilbert proposed requiring large stores to provide a swap bin for clean, reusable bags.

Do you live in Reno (or the surrounding areas) and have something to say about the state of disposable plastic bags and how they can best be dealt with? Green Summit starts at 1PM this Saturday, the 20th, in the Joe Crowley Student Union at UNR. It’s so important (and so centrally located!) that there’s no good reason not to go, so get on down there!

That means you, grandma.

Photo via Flickr!

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 9:43 am and is filed under Happenings, The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.