Photo courtesy of Ross Lavigne - Uwe Krickhahn, Medicine Hat advocate for the reduction of single-use plastic bags, speaks on the issue on Aug. 1, 2019.

By Alex McCuaig

Bag-Ban

Local advocate applauds grocery for plastic bag decision

Aug 1, 2019 | 4:33 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – For more than a decade, longtime Medicine Hat resident Uwe Krickhahn has been advocating Medicine Hat City Hall to ban single-use plastic grocery bags.

He was shot down four times by councillors but by ever narrowing votes since his first attempt in 2008.

But while he may not have won over Medicine Hat councillors, the tide of public sentiment has caught up with Krickhahn’s thinking, evidenced by the announcement earlier this week by Sobeys that it would no longer provide plastic bags in the next year.

Krickhahn said his first attempt to conviemce the city to pass a bylaw to ban all plastic bags in the city didn’t go over too well.

“(I was) met with great resistance from city council. They basically threw me in the river at that time. It was 9 to 0 voted against it – to ban plastic bags at the time.

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But Krickhahn said three subsequent votes narrowed to where the last vote held on the issue lost by a 5 to 4 vote at council.

“The attitute of people in general has changed. Not as much in Alberta as I’d like to see – Prince Edward Island. . .has now banned plastic bags all together. The whole province. That is a step in the right direction,” said Krickhahn.

Sobeys will stop offering single-use bags by January 2020 with the company’s Safeway stores doing the same a year later.