As Earth Day approaches, more stores are jumping on the "bag-wagon" of giving their customers an option to use a reusable bag.
Save-On Foods is shunning plastic bags for Earth Day, and even smaller grocery stories such as West Valley Produce on Bute Street are getting their own canvas bags.
"Basically shoppers can bring in any plastic bags and exchanges them for a reusable cloth shopping bag at no cost," said Patricia Chuey of Save-On Foods.
San Francisco has banned plastic bags, and Ireland has issued a taxation regime designed to limit their use.
In B.C., most representatives on the board of Metro Vancouver support some kind of restriction on bags -- but that commitment isn't there at the top.
B.C.'s premier was talking a green game today at an environmental conference. But he said he wouldn't provide the leadership needed to ban them.
"We want to provide people with choices but the interesting thing about that is we don't have to do that," said Gordon Campbell. "When I go to stores today there are lots of different bag options."
It's up to individual British Columbians to change their habits to stop climate change, said Campbell.
"Just as this is a human problem, it's been created by a lot of human activity, we can solve this problem with a lot of human activity," said Campbell.
"We can solve this problem when each of us decides we're going to take some steps to change how we live, how we interact with the environment, what we are doing," said Campbell.
Craig Foster of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association said a bag ban wouldn't make much of a difference in the landfills.
"Changing less than one per cent of the landfill isn't going to make the same kind of changes as if we tackled some of the other [issues] that turn around and really have an impact," Foster said.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Dag Sharman
