The city of Tempe was in the early stages of banning the distribution of single-use plastic bags before Gov. Doug Ducey signed Senate Bill 1241 that prohibits these bans. Despite the bill, Tempe City Council member Lauren Kuby said the city plans to move forward with discouraging plastic bag use.
"We want to save our city money," Kuby said. "We spend $200,000 a year because of the pollution of single-use plastic bags. That’s a hefty sum we’d like to have in our general fund so we can put it into parks and other taxpayer longed for items."
Kuby said it is estimated that the city of Tempe uses 50 million single-use plastic bags every year and only 5 percent of those are recycled every year. The city plans to reach out to local businesses to encourage them to stop the distribution of the bags.
"Our object is to reduce the consumption of single-use plastic bags," she said. "And we’ll start with the largest consumers of those bags or distributors, probably the supermarkets and talk to them about the large-scale savings that they can experience if they help to reduce plastic pollution in our city."
Kuby also said she believes the main argument here is local control.
"It seems very strange that state government that gets very upset with federal overreach is trying to regulate trash and waste management on the city level," she said. "We’re trying to save our residents money. That’s important to us. And for the state to try and get involved in waste management, it just seems wrongheaded and poor public policy. "
Updated 4/15/2015 at 10:34 a.m.