An alliance of plastic bag manufacturers estimate that a bag ban in Austin, Texas, could cost the state 8,800 jobs, reports the Austin Business Journal.
The Journal reports that the American Progressive Bag Alliance is against the city’s proposed ordinance to tax and ban single-use plastic bags that Mayor Lee Leffingwell has been pushing for.
An Austin Resource Recovery report in January said the bags cost the city $850,000 a year to clean up as litter and put in landfills. The city’s current single-stream auto-sorting recycling system cannot handle single-use plastic bags, according to the Journal.
“We feel that recycling legislation is a better environmental policy,” said Donna Dempsey, a spokeswoman for the APBA, which is currently working on recycling legislation in two states.
Last year, the organization attempted unsuccessfully to get recycling legislation introduced by the state legislature.
The draft ordinance currently before the city council calls for retailers to charge either 10 cents per single-use bag or $1 per transaction starting March 1, 2013, the Journal says.