Among the fun and activities at the Earth Day Oak Cliff festival held Sunday, there was talk of banning plastic shopping bags.
Barbara Macleod's organization "Keep Oak Cliff Beautiful" is frustrated with the number of plastic bags that are littered throughout the city.
"We want to encourage people to bring reusable bags instead of relying on plastic bags that have a shelf life of 30 minutes -- that end up in a tree or in a landfill," Macleod said.
According to environmentalists, one trillion plastic bags are used on an annual basis worldwide and it takes many years to decompose.
“They disintegrate, so instead of one bag they become 18 pieces of trash," Macleod said.
That's one reason why Macleod’s organization spent Sunday gathering signatures for a petition to do away with the bags for good.
This past week, Dallas council member Dwaine Caraway presented a draft ordinance to the city council that bans plastic bags.
Such an ordinance won't be a first in the state; cities like Austin and Brownsville already have set plastic bags bans in place.
But national campaigns such as "Bag the Ban" are trying to fight plastic bag taxes and bans. At the state level, Representative Drew Springer from Muenster in Cook County has filed a bill that would ban all current and future plastic bag bans.
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Those people who see the convenience of using plastic shopping bags will find there’s opposition to that point.
"You know also there was also the convenience of dumping your trash in one receptacle and now everybody is separating and doing their part, so now and so we need to do more," Tim Maloney, a petition signer said.
