Brossard city council voted unanimously Tuesday night to adopt a plastic bag ban.
The ban would begin in September.
Critics say they will be watching to see if the bag ban lives up to its billing.
Dozens of employees from a local plastic bag manufacturer Omniplast turned out to Tuesday night’s meeting to argue that an outright ban on plastic bags would do more harm than good.
They maintain the City of Brossard is using outdated data from 2007 to make its case.
“At that time, the consumption was 2.4 billion bags and the reclaim rate was 14 per cent. Today, the consumption is down to 1 billion bags and the reclaim rate is 93 per cent,” said Marc Robitaille, president of Omniplast.
The plastic bag industry explained that ‘reclaimed’ means that 60 per cent of the bags in Quebec are reused and 30 per cent are recycled.
The concern is a total ban will increase demand for paper bags and reusable bags.
“The reusable bags, by the way, they're not recyclable, so they go straight from purchase to landfill,” said Robitaille.
The Canadian Plastics Association wants Brossard to put off the ban and work with retailers and industry, but some residents told CTV Montreal they want to move forward.
“I think this is the right way to go because we want to make people think before using disposable plastic bags,” said Brossard resident Marie-Eve Potvin.
“I think maybe we overuse plastic. We don't need that much plastic and there are other alternatives,” added resident Diana Iglesias.
A small number of residents asked questions about how the ban would be enforced and the budget for it to be implemented.
Robitaille asked for the city's definition of a single-use bag, and whether or not analysis had been carried out.
Brossard Mayor Paul Leduc, however, would not answer the questions with any detail, explaining he had received a legal letter from the Canadian Plastics Association and therefore deemed it unwise to comment further.
