Bag lady

For educator and former Reno City Council candidate Lisa Schmidt, teaching isn’t limited to a classroom setting—it also compelled her to start the Reno Plastic Bag Ban, an effort to educate locals on the detrimental impacts of plastic disposables.

“I have always been an environmental activist, picking up plastic bags off of the street, out of the Truckee River, and out of trees, if they were within reach, but what inspired me most in starting this project was the hundreds of other cities, states and countries around the world recognizing a need to end the use of plastic disposables,” Schmidt said in an email correspondence. “It was hard for me not to notice the significant amount of legislation passed since 2007 in this country to ban the use of single-use-plastics—mostly low density Polyethylene which is recycle number 4, and what traditional use plastic bags are made of.”

Schmidt, who currently works for the Washoe County School District, started the Facebook page, www.facebook.com/RenoPlasticBagBan, in August. The website, www.renoplasticbagban.jux.com, was went up a few weeks ago. Schmidt says she was inspired by organized efforts in San Francisco, which was the first city to ban plastic bags in 2007, and she thinks that the local government can follow San Francisco’s example.

“[San Francisco has] steadily been expanding their ordinance,” Schmidt said. “I saw a need in our community not just to clean up the bags, but to stop these non-biodegradables at their source.”

She has several concerns about plastic bags, including the amount that end up in landfills and the oil it takes to produce plastics.

“I’m sure [people] would be shocked to learn it is from oil, a non-renewable fossil fuel that once processed into plastic will never completely degrade, is always there in our environment in some toxic form,” she says. “People should also know that although they can ‘recycle’ their plastics, this is not a solution as most of the plastics we use will never be recycled and instead, end up as waste in our oceans and landfills.”

Schmidt’s timeline for action will start in January 2013, where she plans to take the issue to the Reno City Council.

“I am confident that our new City Council will be supportive of such a ban as many of them have shown concern for maintaining a healthy environment in our region,” she said.

An ideal situation would be to “phase out all non-biodegradable plastic bags and non-recyclable paper bags from supermarkets and chain drug stores by the end of 2013, in addition to a city wide education program on why this is a necessary action,” said Schmidt. Then, by 2014, she hopes the ban would be extended to other retailers and also to restaurants.

Schmidt has garnered support from other sustainability organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Great Basin Community Food Co-op, and the Artemisia Moviehouse, with whom she will be hosting a screening of the documentary Bag-It and a panel discussion in early 2013.

“Although a ban might not take affect immediately, the sooner we get the community and our city government talking about this important issue, the sooner a ban can take affect,” said Schmidt.