The City of Montreal is moving to ban all plastic bags by the end of 2020.

Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante tasked the city’s director-general with amending the current bylaw, which bans the distribution of lightweight plastic bags with a thickness of less than 50 microns.

“I ask that we change the bylaw which is currently in force concerning the thickness and that we modify it so that it is a complete ban on plastic bags on the territory of the City of Montreal,” Plante said during a Wednesday morning executive committee meeting at city hall.

While Plante didn’t set an exact date for the new bylaw to come into effect, she said: “It must be done in 2020.”

The mayor said the current bylaw, while well intentioned, didn’t have the desired results.

“The city banned single-use plastic bags with the idea that people would reuse the thicker plastic bags,” she said, adding that to really make a difference, “we need to reduce at the source.”

Plante said that while banning plastic bags won’t fix everything, it’s a concrete action in which everyone can take part.

“It’s a simple gesture to say no more plastic bags to go do our groceries, to buy our clothing. We bring our bags and we reuse,” she said.

Franck Hénot, who owns the Intermarché Boyer grocery store on Mont-Royal Avenue in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood, welcomed the news.

But he’s ahead of the curve. Hénot banned plastic bags from his store on Feb. 1.

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