The Sustainability Advisory Board on Wednesday will revisit, and might vote on, a proposed ordinance that would require establishments to charge customers 15 cents per single-use disposable bag for any purchase. Talks about such an ordinance began in May 2018, when concerned students of the former Kennedy Elementary School made a presentation to the Lawrence City Commission about the damaging environmental effects of plastics. The SAB’s Single Use Plastics Subcommittee presented a report to the City Commission in August 2019 and then collected further public feedback. The topic was moved to the back burner while the Kansas Legislature considered a measure that would prevent such an ordinance at the city level, but that bill died in May 2020, according to the advisory board’s agenda materials. The pandemic, too, had implications — particularly early on, as uncertainty about whether COVID-19 could spread via surfaces spurred some stores to temporarily ban customers from bringing their own reusable bags.
Source: The Lawrence Times