Meet Big Bag

The plastic bag industry has its own lobbying group. And in Philly, it's been damn effective.

by Isaiah Thompson

Evan M. Lopez

[ important stories ]

We all know about influence wielded by the country's great corporate powers: Big Tobacco, King Corn, the great Military-Industrial Complex —but Big Bag?

Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of the mighty plastic bag lobby. Neither had city Councilmen Frank DiCicco and Jim Kenney when, in 2007, they sponsored bills to ban plastic bags and Styrofoam cups, two nonbiodegradable sources of street trash.

More than 80 billion plastic bags are manufactured every year in the U.S. alone — about 250 per American per year. The bags, which cost a few cents apiece, are big business for their manufacturers. But they also cost taxpayers. Residents pay to clean them from rivers, streets and sewers — the city pays about $60,000 a year to fish plastic bags out of local waterways. DiCicco and Kenney had no idea what they were in for when they tried to stop this.

They were deluged by representatives from something called the "Progressive Bag Alliance" — now Progressive Bag Affiliates — a lobbying group whose sole mission has been to shut down municipal efforts to ban or curb the use of plastic bags. They're good at it, too. DiCicco and Kenney reluctantly agreed to table their bills when the Alliance said it would work to encourage voluntary recycling.

In 2009, DiCicco and Kenney renewed their efforts, proposing a new ban on noncompostable plastic bags at grocery stores and pharmacies. And again, Big Bag was ready. At a June meeting of City Council's Committee on the Environment, they appeared in full force. Plastic bags require less energy to produce than their paper counterparts, they argued, so paper bags have a more severe environmental impact. Also, they said, banning plastic bags would hurt local businesses. They brought in grocery-store representatives, who said the ban would increase food costs. They brought in a single elderly lady, who said the measure would hurt elderly consumers like her.

But the most successful lobbying, the bill's sponsors agree, came from local grocery-store owners. In particular, Councilman DiCicco and aides to him and Kenney mention Jeffrey Brown, president and CEO of Brown's Super Stores, and the owner of nearly a dozen ShopRite supermarkets in the Philadelphia area. Though he didn't testify publicly, Brown lobbied behind the scenes, sources say. (Brown denies that he played a major role in the bill's fate.)

However it happened, when the bill finally came to a vote before City Council on June 18, support for the measure had evaporated.

"I've never dealt with a lobbying effort like this," DiCicco aide Brian Abernathy told The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Philly's not the only city to duke it out with Big Bag. In Seattle, a 20-cent fee on plastic bags led to a massive counterinsurgency, funded mostly by the plastic-bag industry. Wielding an astounding $1.4 million, the Coalition to Stop the Grocery Bag Tax blitzed its opponents with ads on TV and radio. The issue ended up on a ballot referendum and, in August, voters repealed the fee. So far, only two cities have passed anti-plastic-bag legislation: San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

In the latter case, the District's 5-cent fee on bags was implemented despite the Affiliates' efforts. The trick, says D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, who co-sponsored the bill, was preparation: "We had read about them," says Wells, "and my team was ready for them." Wells billed the law as a river cleanup initiative. He reached out to leaders in poor black neighborhoods. And he let store owners keep 1 cent of every 5 cents they charged for a bag. It worked. The law goes into effect this January.

Progressive Bag Affiliates is a division of the American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group that represents manufacturers of chemicals, chlorine and, yes, plastics. And plastic, of course, comes from oil. The jump from Big Bag to Big Oil isn't very big.

In early December, DiCicco introduced another bill to require all big-box stores to host plastic-bag recycling bins. It may prevent some litter, but it is also exactly what the Affiliates want. It lets their members make just as many bags as always.

"The thing is, they're not even using the recycled plastic in their own bags," says Katie Edwards of the locally based Clean Air Council. A recent MSNBC report found that 70 percent of all recycled plastic bags are used by a single company — Trex, based in Virginia, which builds playground equipment from the bags.

DiCicco concedes the point. "I'm up against a huge lobbyist group that has lots and lots of money," he says, almost resignedly. "This becomes, at least for me, the best alternative."

And the Affiliates couldn't be happier: "Our group supports a number of ways and efforts to use recycling," says spokeswoman Shari Jackson. Eventually, she says, the Affiliates would like to see plastic bags use 40 percent recycled material.

Asked how much recycled material is in them now, she replies, "We don't have that data."

(isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net)