Austin, other Texas cities follow Brownsville's plastic bag ban

Six months have passed since the plastic bag ban went into effect and cities around Texas are following Brownsville lead but Austin wanted to shine by itself.

During a press conference Austin’s Mayor Lee Leffingwell put himself under the spotlight when trying to highlight Austin as the first city with a plastic bag ban.

“It’s not always best to be first at something. It’s important to be best at something,” said Leffingwell after agreed that Brownsville had previously succeeded on the ban.

Brownsville is the first city in Texas to adopt a successful plastic bag ban and number 12 in the nation.

Cities that are following the city’s initiative are South Padre Island, where the ordinance has been voluntary since February of this year and will take full effect on January 2012; Fort Stockton, where the ban was delayed and will go into effect Sept. 1; and San Antonio, which began a 18-month pilot program on June 28.

In July, Austin’s mayor and city council members voted unanimously in favor of the plastic ban to get city staffers to work on a proposal. A plan will be presented in November, when authorities are going to decide over a final ordinance. According to a report by the Austin-American Statesman, city estimates have Austin spending $850,000 every year to clean up 263 million plastic bags as litter and to discard in landfill.

“They don’t have a start date yet,” said Rose Timmer, executive director of Health Communities of Brownsville, who was an important supporter of Brownsville’s ban. “Four years ago they tried to pass the ban and failed. Now they are following our lead.”

People have a misconception about which city was the first to introduce a plastic bag ban in Texas.

In the past Austin authorities implemented a program to reduce the use of plastic bags but it lasted less than three months, according to Edward Camarillo, former city commissioner who pushed for the ordinance in Brownsville.

The Statesman reported that the to stave off a possible ban in 2008, six large retailers agreed to try to voluntarily reduce the use of plastic bags, but that program was not effective enough according to Leffingwell.

“We haven’t had to stop, if you look at our first week with the ban, we had an 80 percent compliance,” Camarillo said.

Local groups that were involved on the ban planning said they have been in contact with Texas Campaign for the Environment, a non-profit organization that is helping Austin authorities with the ban proposal.

“They are using Brownsville as an example. They got documents written by our lawyers, the city’s health department,” Timmer said. “The environmental group used a lot of our ads, research and general information that Brownsville developed for the ban.”

Houston, Pharr and Grand Prairie have also reached out to Brownsville leaders to help them develop a plan to introduce plastic bag bans, according to Camarillo.

"One of the biggest cities in the state and in the country is calling Brownsville for help,” Camarillo said. “I think is a positive thing that cities can work together.”

For Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez, the ordinance was a good thing to implement. There would be people that think it is inconvenient, but people adapt in one way or another, he said.

“It does help the city. Historically it’s a good start for what we needed,” Martinez said. “Its something that most cities would follow.”

Readers like Geronimo Martinez from Brownsville were upset by the Austin Mayor comments.

“I think credit should be given when it is due. Brownsville is the first city in Texas to ban plastic bags,” Martinez said in a posting on the Google Plus social network. “Just because Austin is our capital doesn’t mean we have to follow them. They can follow our example.”