Austin legislator seeks to revive bag bans

Months after a state court put the kibosh on municipal plastic bag bans, an Austin legislator proposed a law Wednesday that would give cities like Austin the authority to revive such bans.

In June, the Texas Supreme Court said cities may not bar retailers from providing customers with disposable bags at the checkout counter.

The court said bag bans run afoul of a state law that prohibits cities from trying to reduce waste by banning "containers" and "packages." Although the terms are not defined in the law, their plain meaning must be read to include bags, the court ruled.

By early July, Austin officials announced that they would stop enforcing the city's 5-year-old ban on disposable bags.

The bans on single-use bags were aimed at curbing litter and driven by other environmental concerns.

In Austin, retailers were handing out almost 200 million fewer plastic bags a year under the ordinance, according to a 2015 city report.

Before the court decision, conservatives, with the support of the bag industry, unsuccessfully pushed bills to eliminate the prohibitions as an affront to individual and economic liberty.

The new bill by state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, would narrow the definition of the terms “containers” and “packages” to “not include a single-use bag provided by a retail business to a customer at the point of sale for the purpose of transporting purchases.”

“Really it’s a local control bill that would allow municipalities to ban the use of single-use bags and like plastic bags at the grocery store,” Hinojosa told the American-Statesman.

A similar bill by Hinojosa was approved by the House Urban Affairs Committee in the last regular legislative session but was never considered by the full House.

The Texas Association of Business, the Texas Retailers Association, the Texas Association of Manufacturers, and the Texas Chemical Council all opposed Hinojosa’s legislation last time around.

In the event the Texas House passes the bill, it would face a state Senate whose leader, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, generally has been unsympathetic to local environmental interests. And Gov. Greg Abbott, who would have to sign it into law, has stated his opposition to plastic bag bans.

Big retailers such as Walmart and H-E-B have held off on making free plastic bags available at check-out counters in the Austin area, but they have made them available in other cities that previously banned single-use plastic bags, said Robin Schneider, executive director of Texas Campaign for the Environment.

Randalls also has held off on offering free plastic bags, according to a company spokeswoman. Target’s Austin stores began offering plastic bags in August.

In a November memo, Sam Angoori, interim director of Austin Resource Recovery, wrote that the city's staff will promote retailers that prohibit single-use plastic bags on a city webpage, social media and city newsletters, and will distribute reusable shopping bags at city events “to promote the continuation of customer habits to reinforce … the environmental values of the city.”

Despite the unanimous ruling of the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court in a case that involved Laredo's plastic bag ban, a concurring opinion by Justice Eva Guzman, joined by Justice Debra Lehrmann, urged the Legislature to directly tackle the problems caused by disposable bags.

"Improperly discarded plastics have become a scourge on the environment and an economic drain. And due to their buoyancy and propensity for wind-blown incursion, single-use plastic bags — the target of the Laredo ordinance — are a particularly pernicious form of this non-biodegradable menace," Guzman wrote.

The bags kill animals, impede flood control and blight the landscape, she wrote, adding that it is up to lawmakers, not the courts, to balance the negative environmental impact against the economic burdens imposed on store owners and the higher risk of food-borne illness from reusable bags.

American-Statesman staff writer Elizabeth Findell contributed to this report.