Before regional council debates a ban on plastic bags, they’ll first debate whether city staff should even investigate a ban on plastic bags.

Coun. Dawn Sloane (Halifax-Downtown) will table a motion next week seeking a staff report on the ramifications of a ban on plastic bags.

Sloane tells News 95.7, she’s not calling for the report because she wants a ban – she just wants to know if there’s a need for a ban.  

“That’s the whole thing, everyone’s all, ‘Oh, she wants a ban, oh my god, there goes my bags,’” she said. “No. I want to know, if we know how much we’re actually diverting, how much is actually going in? And if we don’t have those numbers, that’s why we need a study.”

Sloane says she’ll ask the staff report to investigate other types of plastics and whether there’s anything the municpality can do to help reduce plastic packaging.

She says that’s something Germany has done sucessfully.

“Maybe that’s something that we could be the leaders of, in starting something like that,” she said. “Then you wouldn’t have to have huge amounts of racks for things that have certain amounts of plastic when you’re buying something the size of a quarter.”

At least one councillor thinks just asking for a staff report is going too far. Coun. Reg Rankin (Timberlea-Prospect) is dismissing Sloane’s motion as election-year posturing.

“If she was interested in a study of our system, then she would have had lots of opportunity to add that to the review that we asked for in October last year, and spring of last year,” he said. “It would be part of the staff report that we’ve asked for, that she knows that we asked for, which is a comprehensive study of the whole waste system, including plastic bags.”

Rankin says it’s pointless to examine plastic bags in isolation.

“You cannot take a piece and say, maybe we can do without,” he said. “What are the implications to the other components of the system that uses plastic bags. To assert that plastic bags are going into the landfill is absolute rubbish.”

Sloane says she’s getting information from retailers and the plastic industry, and won’t make up her mind on a ban until she has the facts.