A Kamloops city councillor who asked city staff to draft a bylaw that bans single use plastics like carryout bags expects the city will do so next year.

Dale Bass says the city has a draft bylaw based on Victoria’s bylaw that was enacted last year but later struck down by the BC Court of Appeal.

She says this move comes after the province cleared the way earlier this month for municipalities to bring in their own bylaws that ban single-use plastics like shopping bags.

“We were about to go into public consultation with it when the court ruling happened. So we are just waiting now I believe for the Community Charter to be amended so that we can become one of the municipalities that can move forward with our bylaw,” she told NL News.

“Its the legislation that governs us and there’s some clauses under there that have to do with what you can and cannot force businesses to do. The province has said that it should have the Community Charter amended within eight months. And I expect that will probably happen next spring.”

Bass says in the meantime, the city will likely work on its bylaw behind the scenes.

“I don’t believe we’ll have to go into public input but there would have to be some time built in for businesses to adjust,” she said, noting single-use plastic bags in particular are used for about 12 minutes on average and then take up to 1,000 years to break down.

“Cutlery and straws were amended out of the motion at the time, but I expect that we would be updating it to make it conform with what the province is allowing now,” she added.

“I’m hoping we’ll do that, I’m anticipating we’ll do that. At the time, some of the council members were a little loathe to implement a lot of things at once but the province obviously feels this way.”