Bernalillo County and the City of Albuquerque recently lifted their bans on plastic bags, drawing praise from the Rio Grande Foundation and Albuquerque Journal.
"While it’s unfortunate it took a pandemic, recent decisions by the city of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County to temporarily lift bans on single-use plastic bags are welcome news for holed up shoppers frustrated by flimsy paper sacks and potentially bacteria- and germ-infested reusable bags," the Journal wrote in an April 4 editorial.
On March 18, Paul Gessing of the Rio Grande Foundation, an economic think tank, wrote an op-ed that called attention to an article in the Journal of Infectious Disease stating that reusable shopping bags were found to have been the source of one COVID-19 outbreak in the Pacific Northwest.
A week later, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller announced he was lifting the ban on single-use plastic bags for 30 days but claimed it had nothing to do with stopping the spread of COVID-19. Instead, he said he just wanted to make life easier on shoppers and retailers, who were finding paper bags hard to come by.
Soon after, Bernalillo County doubled down and lifted its ban for 60 days.
The bans, which went into effect on Jan. 1, drew the ire of many residents, according to the Albuquerque Journal, which also called on the city and county to revisit the plastic bag ban once the pandemic crisis has subsided.
"In this time of a public health emergency, and for whatever reasons, Albuquerque and Bernalillo County have rightly put public safety above negligible environmental results," the Journal's editorial stated. "In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found plastic bags made up less than 1% of overall waste. Moreover, plastic bags are 100% recyclable and frequently re-used, reducing the use of larger plastic bags."
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