The Great Bag Debate is under way.

Mayor-elect Sam Adams ripped open the controversy last month when he told the Portland Tribune he was working on a proposal to discourage the use of plastic bags in Portland grocery stores.

Adams’ proposal could consist of anything from a ban on plastic bags, such as the one San Francisco imposed last year, or a 20-cent tax on both plastic and paper bags, like the one Seattle approved last month.

The idea has no shortage of critics. Some are philosophically opposed to taxes. Some think a ban or a tax is the wrong way to change people’s habits. Some have logistical questions, such as how they’ll be able to scoop their pets’ waste or how poor people will be able to manage large grocery loads.

But the main opposition is likely to originate from the plastic bag industry itself. And their counterattack may just surprise you.

“Plastic bags are an environmentally responsible choice,” said Keith Christman, senior director of packaging for the plastics division of the American Chemistry Council, based in Arlington, Va. “They dramatically reduce energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and are recyclable.”

Christman said his organization tried to prevent Seattle from enacting its fee, but was overpowered by activists peddling what Christman characterized as “misinformation” that paints plastic as a global villain.

“I think a lot of folks had their minds made up,” Christman said, noting that his organization promotes plastic bag recycling as an alternative to bans and taxes.

For example, a new law took effect July 23 in New York City that requires large stores to offer plastic bag recycling to consumers and sell cloth bags as an alternative, or risk fines up to $300 per day.

Seattle’s approach could discourage plastic bag recycling, Christman said, since stores may eliminate their collection bins.

Christman’s lonely campaign to tout the environmental benefits of free plastic bags recently got welcome reinforcements — a California group called SaveThePlasticBag.com.

Backed by heavyweights in the plastics industry including California-based Elkay Plastics Co. Inc. and Michigan-based Grand Packaging, the group unveiled its Web site in June.

Common claims challenged

“We are an information campaign,” said Stephen Joseph, a former litigator who was hired as the coalition’s spokesman last year. “We want to set the record straight.”

At first, siding with the plastics industry seemed unthinkable for Joseph, an environmentalist who sued Kraft Foods Inc. and McDonald’s to get trans fats removed from Oreo cookies and french fries.

Then Joseph read a March 2008 article in the London Times that convinced him there’s a global misinformation campaign against plastic bags.

The article debunked a popular claim — that plastic bags kill 100,000 marine animals and seabirds each year. Joseph now is on a mission to tackle the myths about plastic bags as more cities move to ban or tax them.

“I’m a Democrat, a left-winger,” Joseph said. “People always think, how can he do this? How can I not? If I see something my fellow Democrats are pitching that’s not right, how can I not go after them?”

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality waste prevention specialist David Allaway says some of the assertions the plastic industry makes are correct. Plastic bags aren’t the primary culprit when it comes to litter, he says, and they take up little space in landfills.

But the suggestion that disposable plastic bags are better for the Earth than reusable cloth bags draws nothing but scorn from environmentalists. Charlie Plybon, Oregon field coordinator for a nonprofit group called Surfrider, says plastic bags are detrimental to fish and wildlife in ways that most people can’t see.

“By the time a lot of stuff makes it to the ocean, especially Portland, it’s probably broken down a little bit into smaller pieces,” he said. “Bags are easy to pick up. A bag that breaks down into 5,000 little pieces is very problematic.”

When bags stay intact, he added, they look a lot like jellyfish, which causes many animals to prey on them. “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem,” he said. “There are places in the ocean where plastic outnumbers plankton 6-to-1.”

Raising consumers’ awareness

Surfrider worked with lawmakers in San Francisco and Seattle, Plybon said, and will lobby for Portland leaders to take action as well. “It’s not about hurting anyone, campaigning against the plastic industry,” he said. “It’s about being a conscious consumer.”

Bag opponent Chad Ginther, a structural engineer who lives just outside Portland’s city limits, has long been interested in practicing the three R’s: reuse, reduce and recycle. He says the plastic bag issue can’t be erased by simply promoting recycling.

“Too often we focus on the third R, recycle,” he said. “We forget about reduce and reuse. … I can understand (the industry’s) perspective, but in the big picture of society as a whole, we need to look at using less first.”

The DEQ’s Allaway says the paper-versus-plastic debate is a distraction from the real issue, which is to get consumers to ditch disposable and go for reusable bags instead.

“We have bigger fish to fry than grocery bags,” Allaway said. “(But) there is symbolic value in talking about it. It helps people understand that recycling is good, but using less in the first place is even better.”

Meanwhile, ACC spokesman Christman said that lobbyists for the plastic-bag industry will oppose any tax or ban in Portland. To this end, the ACC has started a Web site, plasticbagrecycling.org, to help consumers find drop-off locations by state.

So far, Oregon has only 10 locations listed — all of which are in Eugene.

jenniferanderson@portlandtribune.com

Paper or plastic? Join the debate

Recycling Advocates, an Oregon nonprofit that promotes efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle, will sponsor a free public forum on the plastic bag dilemma Sept. 15.

RSVP: info@Recycling Advocates.org