In other exciting recycling news, yesterday the City Council passed a plastic bag recycling bill. The bill will require stores over 5000 sqft to offer plastic bag recycling containers and track the resulting recycling. The bill is a good first step increasing recycling for plastic bags.

According to New York City Council, Americans use an estimated 84 billion plastic bags annually, approximately one billion in NYC. The production of plastic bags worldwide uses over 12 million barrels of oil per year.

City Council's next step should reduce the amount of plastic bags used in the city. Offering recyling will not reduce the number of bags that are manufactured and put out on the streets of New York. The recycling bill leaves it up to the consumer to bring back bags to the store. Additionally, plastic recycling while always preferable to landfilling is subject to some caveats. Most plastic recycling currently is shipped to China for processing and then often shipped back to us in some other product. Shipping accounts for 5% of global warming gas emissions according to an article in the UK Guardian. During recycling, plastics degrade and forms smaller particles. Each time a plastic is recycled it is must be used for a lower quality product than its previous state until finally the plastic particles are so small they can not be recyled. So the best option, is as always to reduce our consumption and then recycle what we cannot reduce.

There are many good examples of policies that encourage shoppers to bring their own bags and not take unneeded bags. Australia and San Francisco recently banned non-compostable plastic bags. Many countries in Europe have had taxes on plastic bags for many years.