Corvallis, in Oregon, is running a bag design competition to celebrate recent policy.

Corvallis city in Oregon is launching a bag design competition to accompany the introduction of its first single-use bag policy.

Passed by the city council on July 2nd, the ban will prevent most retailers from distributing single-use plastic checkout bags as of the start date on January 1st 2013.

Meanwhile, others will be tasked with charging five cents per paper bag, in order to encourage the use of reusable cotton bags and reinforced options.

The Corvallis Gazette Times reports that to celebrate these changes, the city is holding a bag design and logo contest. The competition will ask residents to come up with their own plan for a reusable bag using new material.

There will also be the opportunity to design a product using recycled material, as well as creating a new logo for the bag.

Open to all Corvallis residents, the competition runs until Monday November 26th and winning entries will receive a small monetary prize. Furthermore, their designs will be displayed at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library from December 5th until January 1st.

The contest was introduced on November 7th by the Bring Your Bag Team and Oregon State University's School of Fashion, as well as local designers.

During the process, the overall aim of the groups are to have local people design replacements for single-use plastic bags, while raising awareness of the environmental benefits of switching to reusable options.

Speaking to the competition organisers, Nancy Koehn, a retail industry historian at the Harvard Business School, claims that single-use plastic bag bans will "likely spread across the country, even though they interrupt the grace and fabric of the relationship between consumer and retailers".

This awareness and community-bonding campaign is designed to help boost understanding of not only residents, but also businesses, as from the new year companies with more than 50 employees will have to abide by the new regulations.

Then, following this example, firms with 50 or less employees will have to adopt these procedures by July 1st 2013.

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