Evanston Looking To Ban Plastic Bags
EVANSTON, Ill. (CBS) -- Do you like getting those thin little disposable plastic bags at the checkout counter and carrying your groceries in them? A lot of people do.
But as CBS2's Mike Parker reports, some folks in Evanston don't. They want to ban the bags.
It's Springtime in Evanston, the kids are outside, the flowers are starting to bloom and the buds are on the trees in the town designated a "Tree City USA."
Plastic bags are also on the trees, flapping like flags in the wind.
Alderman Coleen Burrus says it is "unfortunate" that there seems to be a bumper crop of the bags. "We have plastic bags that are all over the trees and on barbed wire and in the sewers…and in the gutters."
Burrus says she thinks the city should make it illegal for most stores to supply them to their customers at check out.
And she says it is not simply a matter of aesthetics. Its an environmental issue too.
Ron Fleckman, President of the group "Citizens for a Greener Evanston" agrees. "It's a product that doesn't dissolve, doesn't go away," he says. "It lasts for hundreds of years in landfills."
But a lot of people who use the bags, aren't hearing that.
One resident said his plastic bag is "a lot easier for me to carry."
Another called the move a proposal from "a cuckoo clock on the city council. This town would make everything illegal if it could," he complained.
If Evanston does it, it will join several other US cities, including San Francisco and Santa Monica California.
© MMX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Interactive
