The San Antonio city council is considering a single-use plastic bag ban for the city. The Alamo Colleges’ Environmental Sustainability Council has requested the Alamo Colleges Board of Trustees sign a letter of support for the ban to coincide with city council's action. At this time though, it has not been considered by the board of trustees.
Pilot and voluntary programs across San Antonio have been attempted, but without much success. There are still fences, trees, curbs and waterways laced with plastic bags that have been incorrectly discarded. Please discard your plastic bags responsibly; retailers such as Target, Walgreens, JCPenney, Wal-Mart and H-E-B grocery stores have collection kiosks conveniently located for you to deposit your used plastic bags for recycling.
San Antonio’s curbside, recycling programs do not accept plastic bags at this time because of their light weight. So next time add, “recycle plastic bags” to your grocery list.
Here is some information about what kind of plastic bags can be deposited at these collection kiosks and recycled in San Antonio.
These items CANNOT be recycled:
- Used food or cling wrap
- Pre-packaged food bags, including frozen wrappers
- Bio-based or compostable bags
Don’t forget these other plastic items:
- Grocery bags
- Retail bags (hard plastic and string handles removed)
- Paper towel and toilet paper plastic wrap
- Newspaper bags
- Dry cleaning bags
- Bread bags
- Produce bags
- Furniture, electronic wrap
- Sandwich bags (with zipper removed)
If you must use plastic bags, please try and reduce the amount you use:
- Only take a bag when you really need it.
- Utilize reusable bags when shopping
- Pack the bags as full as possible! Keep in mind that a plastic bag can hold up to 17 pounds of product-nearly 2,000 times its own weight.
(From changeisinthebag.org, City of San Antonio website)
Contributed by Sabrina Carey, NVC employee