Victory!: Mayor Keller Pauses Plastic Bag Ban for 30 days (also RGF makes the NY Times)

Businesses are allowed plastic bags for their customers, City will suspend enforcement of the plastic bag ban.

This afternoon Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller released an announcement that for the next 30 days, businesses will be allowed to use any type of plastic bag for their customers and the City will suspend enforcement of the plastic bag ban.

This announcement comes hot on the heels of the Rio Grande Foundation’s fact-based recommendations to eliminate plastic bag bans, at least for the duration of the Coronavirus and COVID-19 outbreak.

See our original article: Is there a worse idea in this time of Coronavirus than Pat Davis’s plan to “more fully” ban plastic bags?

Earlier this month, Albuquerque City Councilor Pat Davis’s made comments on expanding the city’s ban on plastic bags. These comments are completely out of touch, especially in this time of Coronavirus.

Instead of pushing to make the plastic bag ban even more onerous and aggressive, the Rio Grande Foundation recommended that Councilor Davis, Mayor Keller, and the Bernalillo County Commission should ALL reconsider their bag bans… at least for the duration of this public health emergency.

I could not be more pleased to announce that we were successful. We thank Mayor Keller for recognizing the problem and working with our recommendations to cease the bag ban.

These are good solutions, and coming together just like this will help us beat and soundly defeat the Coronavirus and COVID-19. New Mexico is coming together against this common enemy.

And, while covering the issue the New York Times lived down to its reputation for left-wing hackery by covering our efforts, but of course spending all their time talking about the Koch Brothers who to our knowledge have no interest in plastic bags and certainly haven’t funded our work on the issue.