A Thousand Voices: Effort to restrict plastic bags in Lawrence gets mixed feedback in latest survey

There’s some uncertainty among those who voted in the Journal-World‘s latest online survey about an effort by local environmental groups to restrict the use of plastic grocery sacks and other such single-use plastic bags in Lawrence.

We asked LJWorld.com readers their thoughts about the effort, which was brought to the city’s Sustainability Advisory Board on Nov. 11 by members of three environmental groups.

The groups’ members noted other U.S. cities that have implemented restrictions and said the action was an “immediate win.”

About this article

A Thousand Voices is a feature that surveys readers of LJWorld.com about their opinions on a variety of issues being debated by the public. The Journal-World will regularly conduct a poll that captures a representative sample of the approximately 35,000 users of LJWorld.com. All polling will be conducted by our partner, Google Consumer Surveys. The Google system chooses participants for the poll at random. Users of LJWorld.com have no ability to choose to take the poll. Some people had this survey presented to them when they went to our website and some didn’t. Each poll consists of at least 1,000 responses from website users. The survey software calculates results using margins of error and 95 percent confidence levels common to the polling industry.

If you have a topic you would like to see as part of a future poll, please suggest it to Nikki Wentling at nwentling@ljworld.com

But members of the advisory board were hesitant and wanted more information before officially taking up the issue.

For LJWorld.com readers, the answers were mixed when asked if — and how — they wanted to limit the use of plastic bags in the city.

Here’s a look at the results:

• Almost half (48 percent) of respondents answered that they did support the effort. The remaining 52 percent answered “No” (25.9 percent) or “Not Sure” (26 percent). The margin of error for this result was 2.6 to 3.

• When asked about what method they preferred to restrict single-use plastic bags — either banning them or imposing a small fee for shoppers who use them — respondents were mostly unsure. “Not sure” was the most-selected option, with 44.6 percent of votes. The other choices were almost evenly split, with 28.4 percent of respondents choosing a ban and 27 percent saying a fee would be better. The result had a margin of error of 2.6 to 3.

Other cities across the U.S. have tackled plastic bag restrictions with different methods and varying success. According to the Surfrider Foundation, a group that advocates for the protection of oceans and beaches, the most effective ordinances include a mixture of both.

The process and method through which plastic bags are restricted will be a major point the environmental groups will need to discuss when working on a more detailed proposal.

A proposal — when there is one — will face some hurdles before any type of implementation is considered.

The Sustainability Advisory Board unanimously voted to have one of its members work with the groups to create a detailed proposal. When complete, the proposal will be taken before the advisory board, and it will consider whether to advance it. As a city advisory board, it can make recommendations to the City Commission.

The board’s chairman, Dale Nimz, said at the meeting that board members had previously talked about restricting plastic bag use, but it did not make the cutoff for the board’s priorities for the year. The issues that did were energy conservation, water conservation and land-use planning.

If there’s high interest in the effort, priorities could be changed, Nimz said.