Single carry-out bags come in many different forms at the check-out stations of supermarkets: reusable, paper and much less plastic. Currently in Massachusetts, 55 cities and towns have placed regulations on single, carry-out bags.
Since San Francisco became the first city in March 2007 to ban common plastic bags, cities across the U.S. have followed for the past decade, aiming to spread green initiatives throughout the state. In addition to the towns and counties with plastic bag legislation, notable cities include Austin, Cambridge, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boulder, New York City and Washington, D.C. Such areas face the environmental and economic impacts of plastic bag regulation.
“Massachusetts is leading the country currently in those efforts,” said Clint Richmond, a Massachusetts Sierra Club volunteer involved with plastic bag initiatives. “Since 2012, the number of communities passing these bans have doubled. Annual rates went from one, two, four, eight, 16, that kind of progression. So that’s how we got to 55.”
The Massachusetts Sierra Club chapter has been working actively with local communities for years to ban plastic shopping bags and has been attempting to pass a state bill since 2009.
Striving for sustainable packaging, the chapter works to prohibit the production of bags out of petrochemicals, which are obtained from petroleum and natural gas.
“All petrochemicals are causing a lot of environmental harm from the extraction and production,” Richmond said. “So there’s the generic harm of that continued industry. Plastic bags are made out of natural gas and natural gas in the United States is fracked. So if you support single-use plastic bags, you’re basically saying fracking’s great.”
The chapter wants sustainable packaging, Richmond said.
“Making them out of petrochemicals is not a viable long-run solution to our packaging needs and we need to go back to earlier forms like paper,” Richmond said. “Now people are widely adopting reusable bags and those that are made out of cloth. Some of them are made out of petrochemicals, and if you use them hundreds of times the environmental impact is much less than a single use plastic bag.”
Because they are lightweight, plastic bags can become litter and are problemental because they do not biodegrade like paper, Richmond said.
“Not everything gets thrown away properly,” said Ted Egan, the Chief Economist for the City of San Francisco. “Stuff winds up in the base, stuff winds up in the ocean. And even if it does get thrown away, it goes to landfill and doesn’t biodegrade.”
“They’re not considered valuable and when things aren’t valuable they also become litter, like a single-use plastic bag,” Richmond said. “Litter can impact animals. All synthetic materials are problematic for nature because animals don’t know what to do with them, they didn’t invent them, they don’t recognize them.”
The campaign for plastic bag bans throughout local communities in Massachusetts started off as a statewide effort, but fell to individual cities and towns.
“It depends on where folks are organized or motivated,” Richmond said. “For a city’s ban to go into effect, you need a local team to make it happen.”
These individual communities implemented legislation for immediate impact. In March 2016, Cambridge became the first Massachusetts city to ban plastic bags altogether and require merchants to offer paper bags for a fee of at least 10 cents.
“The 10 cents charge is critical because it’s changed people’s behavior,” said Michael Orr, the Recycling Director of the Cambridge Department of the Public Works. “We measured a 50-80 percent reduction in single-use bag consumption. We’re seeing a major shift and behavior change and we’re definitely seeing a shift in plastic bags contaminating our recycling.”
Cambridge developed the “Bring Your Own Bag Ordinance” after discovering that plastic bags are ending up in recycling bins, which are not recyclable in the city’s curbside program, Orr said.
Before the ban, plastic bags often contaminated the Charlestown recycling facility, costing the city. In the process, the recycling contractor, paying hundreds of employees” to cut plastic bags out of machinery, felt strained, Orr said.
“The plastic bags themselves may not weigh a lot and they may not seem like they’re very hazardous to the system, but they’re very pervasive and they’re very difficult to pull out of the system,” Orr said. “Pretty much every single day they have to stop the machinery and they lose the economic opportunity of recycling stuff.”
Through regulation, cities were open to the miniscule financial impacts plastic bags have on consumers, retailers and municipialities. While most Cambridge businesses were supportive of the ban, a few were not “too excited” initially, Orr said.
“With all change, there’s going to be apprehension at first,” Orr said. “But, quickly, people began getting into the right habit, people saw how easy it was, they felt good about reducing. And now, we get virtually no complaints from either the business community or the consumers. But it’s just critical for people to remember to build in reduce and reuse into their lifestyle because it costs you, the taxpayer, money every time you want to throw away something. So it’s not all free.”
If the banning of plastic bags produces an economic effect, it has proven to be miniscule, both Richmond and Ted Egan, Chief Economist for the City of San Francisco, said.
“Plastic bags are a really tiny percentage of a store’s business,” Richmond said. “No stores have gone out of business because of this. People who would shop out of town to get a free plastic bag… that’s pretty extreme. It’s not something that’s a serious trend or threat to a retailer.”
Weighing the costs and benefits of plastic bag regulation has been the basis of policies across the country.
“From the cost side, plastic bag regulation forced retailers to switch to something else more expensive or less convenient,” Egan said. “From the benefit side, the city has less plastic waste to deal with.”
Egan was one of the co-authors of the 2011 San Francisco Office of Economic Analysis report “Checkout Bag Charge: Economic Impact Report,” which projected the city’s 2011 legislation to have a “very slight positive impact on the economy.” The legislation, extending the city’s 2007 plastic checkout bag ban to all retailers in San Francisco, requires retailers to charge customers for each paper, compostable plastic or reusable bag. Retailers were predicted to be the prime beneficiaries, the report said.
“If they’re basically reselling single-use paper or compostable bags, they’re probably making money off the bag,” Egan said. “So it’s very unlikely that the retailers themselves suffer. It’s more likely that whatever pain there is gets pushed onto consumers but there hasn’t been any outcry about it at all.”
The costs and benefits of the regulation levels out for the consumer as well. Although San Francisco consumers will be spending $20 million annually in checkout bag charges by 2014 and more on reusable bags and home garbage bin liners, retail prices will also fall, the report said.
“It’s turned out not to be a big deal,” Egan said. “And people don’t mind spending the charge. Even with plastic bags, someone always had to pay for it. By taking the cost of the plastic bags out of the equation, it’s not an additional expense to the consumer.”
Opposition from plastic bag proponents have attempted to block legislation. As one example, Bag the Ban is a project of NOVOLEX, an industry-leading manufacturer of recycled content high density polyethylene bags, paper bags, films and related products. Along with other organizations in support of the plastics industry and plastic recycling like the American Progressive Bag Alliance and the American Chemistry Council, they claim that bag bans and taxes threaten American jobs and force families to spend more at the checkout.
With capital expenditures of up to 9,937.3 million, 24,600 jobs fall under the plastic bag industry, said a report by the Plastics Trade Association.
“A lot of the industry thinks that plastic bags are a very important tool for consumerism, which there are very good arguments for that,” Orr said. “But the way we’ve seen in practice is that plastic bags aren’t being recycled. When people try to recycle them, they do it improperly, mostly by putting it in their curbside recycling, which is not acceptable.”
Egan said that the cost of the ban will be born by consumers to the extent that retailers are required to charge their customers more. The city’s goal is to reduce plastic bag use so the consumer can make the decision to save money by bringing their own reusable bags, Egan said.
“Ultimately, it’s a local political decision,” Egan said. “Our report lays out costs and benefits, we put it out in front of decision-makers. If it’s popular with decision-makers, it’s going to be popular with the public and retailers. While it may be true that there are economic costs, people need to be willing to bear those costs within San Francisco in exchange for the environmental benefits. I think with a lot of environmental regulation, you have to remember that it’s a matter of overcoming habit as much as getting people to accept real economic cost.”
“It all goes back to consumers,” Orr said. “If you have a 10 cent charge on bags, they’re more likely to bring their reusable bags. We see it week after week, the reusable bags are showing up at the grocery stores, which means that they’re getting a lot of use. They’re not just being used once or twice and being thrown away. They’re being reused over and over because the 10 cent charge is a constant feedback system. It gets you to bring in a bag each time.”
When the ban first took place, the Cambridge Department of Public Works initiated the task of getting reusable bags in the hands of those in need, asking city council to buy reusable bags for the community, mostly for low-income and senior citizens “who may not be able to afford the 10 cent charge each time they go shopping,” Orr said.
Even with local efforts spreading across the state, both Orr and Richmond are pushing for statewide legislation so Massachusetts can join the 11 other regulated states. This campaign is important for addressing the frustrations of chain supermarkets located in 25 different communities with 25 different laws across the state, Orr said.
“It was really easy to do it at the local level,” Richmond said. “And once we had success there, it proved that there was demand for state-level. The more towns that we’ve got to pass these laws has improved the chances of passing something on the state level.”
Moreover, the conversation for strong regulations limiting plastic use should not end with bags for the future.
“It doesn’t end with bags and that’s why we’re talking about sustainable packaging in a larger context so it includes styrofoam, plastic water bottles,” Richmond said. “We’re really trying to start a conversation about over-consumption and excessive use of plastics. We’re squandering our fossil fuel resources and it helps subsidize the fossil fuels that are causing climate change."
Since San Francisco became the first city in March 2007 to ban common plastic bags, cities across the U.S. have followed for the past decade, aiming to spread green initiatives throughout the state. In addition to the towns and counties with plastic bag legislation, notable cities include Austin, Cambridge, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boulder, New York City and Washington, D.C. Such areas face the environmental and economic impacts of plastic bag regulation.
“Massachusetts is leading the country currently in those efforts,” said Clint Richmond, a Massachusetts Sierra Club volunteer involved with plastic bag initiatives. “Since 2012, the number of communities passing these bans have doubled. Annual rates went from one, two, four, eight, 16, that kind of progression. So that’s how we got to 55.”
The Massachusetts Sierra Club chapter has been working actively with local communities for years to ban plastic shopping bags and has been attempting to pass a state bill since 2009.
Striving for sustainable packaging, the chapter works to prohibit the production of bags out of petrochemicals, which are obtained from petroleum and natural gas.
“All petrochemicals are causing a lot of environmental harm from the extraction and production,” Richmond said. “So there’s the generic harm of that continued industry. Plastic bags are made out of natural gas and natural gas in the United States is fracked. So if you support single-use plastic bags, you’re basically saying fracking’s great.”
The chapter wants sustainable packaging, Richmond said.
“Making them out of petrochemicals is not a viable long-run solution to our packaging needs and we need to go back to earlier forms like paper,” Richmond said. “Now people are widely adopting reusable bags and those that are made out of cloth. Some of them are made out of petrochemicals, and if you use them hundreds of times the environmental impact is much less than a single use plastic bag.”
Because they are lightweight, plastic bags can become litter and are problemental because they do not biodegrade like paper, Richmond said.
“Not everything gets thrown away properly,” said Ted Egan, the Chief Economist for the City of San Francisco. “Stuff winds up in the base, stuff winds up in the ocean. And even if it does get thrown away, it goes to landfill and doesn’t biodegrade.”
“They’re not considered valuable and when things aren’t valuable they also become litter, like a single-use plastic bag,” Richmond said. “Litter can impact animals. All synthetic materials are problematic for nature because animals don’t know what to do with them, they didn’t invent them, they don’t recognize them.”
The campaign for plastic bag bans throughout local communities in Massachusetts started off as a statewide effort, but fell to individual cities and towns.
“It depends on where folks are organized or motivated,” Richmond said. “For a city’s ban to go into effect, you need a local team to make it happen.”
These individual communities implemented legislation for immediate impact. In March 2016, Cambridge became the first Massachusetts city to ban plastic bags altogether and require merchants to offer paper bags for a fee of at least 10 cents.
“The 10 cents charge is critical because it’s changed people’s behavior,” said Michael Orr, the Recycling Director of the Cambridge Department of the Public Works. “We measured a 50-80 percent reduction in single-use bag consumption. We’re seeing a major shift and behavior change and we’re definitely seeing a shift in plastic bags contaminating our recycling.”
Cambridge developed the “Bring Your Own Bag Ordinance” after discovering that plastic bags are ending up in recycling bins, which are not recyclable in the city’s curbside program, Orr said.
Before the ban, plastic bags often contaminated the Charlestown recycling facility, costing the city. In the process, the recycling contractor, paying hundreds of employees” to cut plastic bags out of machinery, felt strained, Orr said.
“The plastic bags themselves may not weigh a lot and they may not seem like they’re very hazardous to the system, but they’re very pervasive and they’re very difficult to pull out of the system,” Orr said. “Pretty much every single day they have to stop the machinery and they lose the economic opportunity of recycling stuff.”
Through regulation, cities were open to the miniscule financial impacts plastic bags have on consumers, retailers and municipialities. While most Cambridge businesses were supportive of the ban, a few were not “too excited” initially, Orr said.
“With all change, there’s going to be apprehension at first,” Orr said. “But, quickly, people began getting into the right habit, people saw how easy it was, they felt good about reducing. And now, we get virtually no complaints from either the business community or the consumers. But it’s just critical for people to remember to build in reduce and reuse into their lifestyle because it costs you, the taxpayer, money every time you want to throw away something. So it’s not all free.”
If the banning of plastic bags produces an economic effect, it has proven to be miniscule, both Richmond and Ted Egan, Chief Economist for the City of San Francisco, said.
“Plastic bags are a really tiny percentage of a store’s business,” Richmond said. “No stores have gone out of business because of this. People who would shop out of town to get a free plastic bag… that’s pretty extreme. It’s not something that’s a serious trend or threat to a retailer.”
Weighing the costs and benefits of plastic bag regulation has been the basis of policies across the country.
“From the cost side, plastic bag regulation forced retailers to switch to something else more expensive or less convenient,” Egan said. “From the benefit side, the city has less plastic waste to deal with.”
Egan was one of the co-authors of the 2011 San Francisco Office of Economic Analysis report “Checkout Bag Charge: Economic Impact Report,” which projected the city’s 2011 legislation to have a “very slight positive impact on the economy.” The legislation, extending the city’s 2007 plastic checkout bag ban to all retailers in San Francisco, requires retailers to charge customers for each paper, compostable plastic or reusable bag. Retailers were predicted to be the prime beneficiaries, the report said.
“If they’re basically reselling single-use paper or compostable bags, they’re probably making money off the bag,” Egan said. “So it’s very unlikely that the retailers themselves suffer. It’s more likely that whatever pain there is gets pushed onto consumers but there hasn’t been any outcry about it at all.”
The costs and benefits of the regulation levels out for the consumer as well. Although San Francisco consumers will be spending $20 million annually in checkout bag charges by 2014 and more on reusable bags and home garbage bin liners, retail prices will also fall, the report said.
“It’s turned out not to be a big deal,” Egan said. “And people don’t mind spending the charge. Even with plastic bags, someone always had to pay for it. By taking the cost of the plastic bags out of the equation, it’s not an additional expense to the consumer.”
Opposition from plastic bag proponents have attempted to block legislation. As one example, Bag the Ban is a project of NOVOLEX, an industry-leading manufacturer of recycled content high density polyethylene bags, paper bags, films and related products. Along with other organizations in support of the plastics industry and plastic recycling like the American Progressive Bag Alliance and the American Chemistry Council, they claim that bag bans and taxes threaten American jobs and force families to spend more at the checkout.
With capital expenditures of up to 9,937.3 million, 24,600 jobs fall under the plastic bag industry, said a report by the Plastics Trade Association.
“A lot of the industry thinks that plastic bags are a very important tool for consumerism, which there are very good arguments for that,” Orr said. “But the way we’ve seen in practice is that plastic bags aren’t being recycled. When people try to recycle them, they do it improperly, mostly by putting it in their curbside recycling, which is not acceptable.”
Egan said that the cost of the ban will be born by consumers to the extent that retailers are required to charge their customers more. The city’s goal is to reduce plastic bag use so the consumer can make the decision to save money by bringing their own reusable bags, Egan said.
“Ultimately, it’s a local political decision,” Egan said. “Our report lays out costs and benefits, we put it out in front of decision-makers. If it’s popular with decision-makers, it’s going to be popular with the public and retailers. While it may be true that there are economic costs, people need to be willing to bear those costs within San Francisco in exchange for the environmental benefits. I think with a lot of environmental regulation, you have to remember that it’s a matter of overcoming habit as much as getting people to accept real economic cost.”
“It all goes back to consumers,” Orr said. “If you have a 10 cent charge on bags, they’re more likely to bring their reusable bags. We see it week after week, the reusable bags are showing up at the grocery stores, which means that they’re getting a lot of use. They’re not just being used once or twice and being thrown away. They’re being reused over and over because the 10 cent charge is a constant feedback system. It gets you to bring in a bag each time.”
When the ban first took place, the Cambridge Department of Public Works initiated the task of getting reusable bags in the hands of those in need, asking city council to buy reusable bags for the community, mostly for low-income and senior citizens “who may not be able to afford the 10 cent charge each time they go shopping,” Orr said.
Even with local efforts spreading across the state, both Orr and Richmond are pushing for statewide legislation so Massachusetts can join the 11 other regulated states. This campaign is important for addressing the frustrations of chain supermarkets located in 25 different communities with 25 different laws across the state, Orr said.
“It was really easy to do it at the local level,” Richmond said. “And once we had success there, it proved that there was demand for state-level. The more towns that we’ve got to pass these laws has improved the chances of passing something on the state level.”
Moreover, the conversation for strong regulations limiting plastic use should not end with bags for the future.
“It doesn’t end with bags and that’s why we’re talking about sustainable packaging in a larger context so it includes styrofoam, plastic water bottles,” Richmond said. “We’re really trying to start a conversation about over-consumption and excessive use of plastics. We’re squandering our fossil fuel resources and it helps subsidize the fossil fuels that are causing climate change."