Lawrence to consider 16-cent fee for plastic, paper bags

City of Lawrence leaders will soon consider whether to start charging people for disposable grocery and shopping bags in an effort to reduce plastic waste.

The city’s Sustainability Advisory Board voted last summer to make the issue of single-use plastics one of its priorities, and since then a committee has been studying a potential plastic bag ban. The committee has completed its review and is recommending that a fee for plastic and paper bags be imposed instead of an outright ban, according to the committee report.

Lawrence-Douglas County Sustainability Director Jasmin Moore, who is the staff liaison to the board, said the main consideration in the recommendation was how effective a ban or a fee would be at reducing plastic waste. Moore said that research has shown that in some communities retailers and grocers just shifted to thicker plastic bags that didn’t qualify as disposable but that some customers still threw away.