Ann Arbor City Council to revisit plastic shopping bag ban proposal tonight

A plastic shopping bag ban for the city's largest retailers will be back before the Ann Arbor City Council tonight.

If passed, the ordinance would bar retailers that have gross annual sales of more than $1 million from providing plastic bags. The ordinance doesn't apply to the small plastic bags often available for produce at grocery stores.

Ann Arbor would join dozens of cities across the country, including San Francisco and Palo Alto, Calif., that have passed ordinances in the past couple of years either banning or taxing the use of plastic shopping bags for environmental reasons.

Earlier this summer, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program called for a global ban on the bags.

Ann Arbor would be the first municipality in Washtenaw County to prohibit the bags. In March, the council voted to give itself more time to work on the ban, which was proposed last summer.

The ban would presumably impact large retailers in Briarwood Mall, Arborland Mall and large grocery stores in the city limits. Many large local retailers, such as the local Meijer stores, would not be impacted because their stores are outside the city limits.