Many communities across Manitoba are banning single use plastic bags, but Dauphin is not one of them.
The City of Dauphin chose recycling initiatives over putting efforts into implementing a ban.
Sharla Griffiths, Dauphin's Assistant CAO, says the city’s administration did look into the issue a while ago but decided not to pursue the idea.
“Council did take a look at it a while back, but decided their focus at the time was increasing our recycling numbers.” She continues, “they thought that their efforts would best focused on recycling, at that time.”
“At that time organizations were giving out free re-usable shopping bags. As well as starting to charge for the single use plastic bags.”
Mayor Allen Dowhan spoke with us about one of the directions city council decided to move towards instead of the ban.
“The biggest public initiative has been the sort of, compulsory recycling with making sure that you have a recycling bin. We provided everybody with that. And also if you don’t put out your recycling bin on collection day we won’t pick up your garbage.”
Bag bans have been implemented in Thompson, The Pas, Leaf Rapids, and Snow Lake with a City of Winnipeg committee currently considering the idea.
