Paused due to COVID, Gig Harbor plastic bag ban is coming back. Get ready.
Gig Harbor will be bringing back a ban on plastic bags after the restriction was lifted for health reasons associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the city announced Monday.
Laura Pettitt, communications director for the city, told The Gateway that the ban would go back into place on October 1.
“We suspended it due to COVID because of the difficulties in maintaining standards of bringing your own bags and germs,” Pettitt said. “The ban that was approved and was scheduled to be in place is just happening now.”
In a release, the city said that the initial ban was scheduled to be in place in January of 2021 and pointed to “supply chain issues of compliant bags associated with the COVID-19 pandemic” as being the reason Governor Jay Inslee put the prohibition on pause.
“Although the statewide bag ban has not been in effect to this point, the City of Gig Harbor, along with the Department of Ecology, encourages businesses to begin transitioning to the law’s new requirements as they can,” the release said. “However, businesses are not required to do so until the newly established effective date of October 1, 2021.”
The city also linked to a toolkit for more information on the bans at https://ecology.wa.gov/Special-Pages/Bag-ban-toolkit.
This story was originally published July 20, 2021 at 11:24 AM.
