A gooey pile of plastic and other human-made flotsam and jetsam, gathered in just half an hour from the Inner Harbour shoreline, provided an appropriate backdrop for Gillian Montgomery on Tuesday.
Montgomery, the chapter manager for the Surfrider Foundation on Vancouver Island, was speaking about a free screening Wednesday night at Victoria City Hall of Bag It — a documentary about the effects that bags and other plastic goods can have on the marine environment.
Surfrider is an international group dedicated to the protection of the world’s oceans and beaches.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, who will be part of a panel discussion after the film showing, said a plastic-bag ban for the municipality is in the works. She said a six-month period of public education is underway, and in the fall a bylaw banning plastic bags will be put forward.
“We’ve got a responsibility as human beings, as a community, as a city to clean up our act, quite literally, so that the ocean is clean for generations to come,” Helps said. “It’s just as convenient — in fact, more convenient — to bring your reusable bags from home. It’s really simple.
“It’s really bad for business when there’s a bag with your logo on it strewn on the beach.”
She said the Capital Regional District is taking the lead in drafting a bylaw that will be consistent throughout the jurisdiction.
“It will be up to each municipality to adopt that bylaw.”
Montgomery said single-use plastic bags are “a symbol of our wasteful culture,” and part of the goal is getting them out of the retail sector. Many local businesses have already gone plastic-bag-free, she said.
Surfrider does regular monthly cleanups at local beaches and finds plastic bags every time, she said.
“Single-use plastic bags, unfortunately they’re light, they fly in the wind and they wind their way up on a beach.”
Plastic-bag bans are already in place in Seattle, Portland and many other cities around the world, as well as the state of California, Montgomery said.
She said close to 9,000 signatures have been collected in support of a local ban.
She said a big part of the problem is that plastics don’t just go away, but break down into progressively smaller pieces, posing a hazard to marine life.
“Ninety per cent of sea birds have ingested plastic, as well as almost every sea turtle around the globe,” she said.
Montgomery said the Surfrider Foundation is taking part in Plastic Free July, an event being held in more than 130 countries.
“We’re challenging the local community to say: ‘You know what, for one month I’m just going to try to refuse single-use plastics.’ ” That could include things like “straws, plastic bags, water bottles — things that we find in our cleanups on a regular basis that there are alternatives to.”
Wednesday night’s film presentation starts at 7 in council chambers. Joining Helps on the panel will be Jill Doucette of Synergy Enterprises, Sarah Wagstaff of Whole Foods and Caitlyn Brown of Mountain Equipment Co-op.
