Proposed plastic bag ban has Saskatchewan talking

A proposed ban on plastic bags for environmental reasons has got Saskatchewan talking.

Last week, the members of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities voted in favour of a ban.

A resolution approved Friday by the lobby group calls on the provincial government to prohibit the sale and use of the bags because they cause pollution.

Callers to CBC's Blue Sky were lighting up the phone lines on the topic Monday.

Scott Moe, Saskatchewan's environment minister, said Monday he wants to follow up with SARM and talk more about their resolution.

He noted that most of the attention has been on recycling and reusing plastic bags.

"Right now, I think our answer would be that the plastic bags would be part of the multi-material recycling program that'll be implemented in the new year," Moe said at the legislature.

He added that, while some municipalities have moved on the issue, there were no provinces that had put in place an outright ban on plastic bags.

"Other jurisdictions have looked at it and to my knowledge none of them have implemented that yet," he said. "There is no provinces that have done it as far as a province-wide ban on plastic bags [so] we'd have to have that discussion and to date we have not had it."

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