Wouldn't it be great if you could change the local environment for the better with just a five minute email or phone call? Here's your chance!
We are down to the wire here in Montgomery County, Maryland, hoping for the county council to do the right thing and pass a local bag bill. Now is the time to call your council members and show your support of this legislation. They will vote early next week, so there is no time to waste.
The bill would essentially place a fee on the use of disposable bags in the county. A similar bill passed last year in neighboring DC was so wildly sucessful it even shocked the environmentalists.
Anyone who has ever walked a creek in this county knows the problem all too well; bags line the banks and clog the streams at each turn. Volunteers at some Anacostia Watershed Society clean ups have collected as many as 28,000 bags in the past in one day. Friends of Rock Creek (FORCE) say they collected more than 5,000 bags this month --just in Montgomery County!!
FORCE also notes that the revenues from a Montgomery County bag would probably garner an estimated $1.5 million in the first year. This money would be directed to the county’s Water Quality Protection Fund which pays for storm water management, watershed restoration, and litter cleanup. Additionally implementation of the legislation would save the county some of the $3 million that it currently spends on litter prevention and cleanup.
Want to learn more about the bill? Click here.
Contacting the council is easy. Your email need not be long, just a few sentences that say you support the bill will be sufficient.
Click here for the county council's contact info.
Showing posts with label Grocery bags. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grocery bags. Show all posts
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
A Bill to Banish the Bags in Maryland
Stopping those Urban Tumbleweeds:
The Sligo Naturalist for January 2011
December was a very windy month. I spent a lot of mornings walking my dog through an empty park with my collar turned up against the cold, watching the tumbleweeds roll across the abandoned soccer fields.
Only wait!… those weren’t tumbleweeds. They were plastic shopping bags!
One particularly blustery morning I worked with my kids to untangle no less than five of them from a single brambled corner of our local park. We hurried to catch them and dispose of them before they sailed towards our favorite tall oak trees. Sometimes the bags make their way to the highest branches there, mocking us with their crackly calling sounds for years.
The bags can be more than just noisy and unsightly; they are also increasingly seen as a potential health hazard. Many times they make their way to streams and rivers. In fact, some past trash clean-ups in our area have recorded close to 30,000 of them along the Anacostia’s banks – and that only includes the ones which volunteers were able to snag by hand and record for the official count. The ones that remain behind drape themselves across the shrubs that line river banks like parodies of weeping willow branches, sometimes strangling animals and suffocating aquatic animals who mistake them for prey.
What’s more, the plastic in the bags does not biodegrade -- it simply becomes part of the industrial flotsam which is now accumulating in the world’s oceans. There is growing scientific concern about the effect the plastic particles from bags and other kinds trash are having on the planet’s food webs. The fish eat the plastic… we eat the fish… we all consume the pollution.
So with all of these things in mind I heartily celebrated the January 1 anniversary of the new DC bag law. It has been one full year since the District imposed a five cent fee on all plastic bags given out in the city during retail transactions, and by all accounts the new law has been a resounding success. Retail bag use has declined by 80 percent since last winter.
Groups that work to clean the rivers have even noticed a reduction in trash. The Alice Ferguson Foundation, a group that works along the region’s rivers each year, saw a marked reduction in the amount of bags reported during their events last spring.
“Plastic bags were down sixty percent at the clean-ups,” Julie Lawson from the Maryland’s Trash Free Alliance told me. “That was only three months after the law went into effect.”
Initially, there was doubt about how it would all work, even from those in environmental quarters.
"I was really shocked at how effective the small fee was in DC. You wouldn't think that five cents a bag would change anyone's behavior. But apparently it really helped make people think twice about needing a bag," Michael Wilpers, President of the Friends of Sligo Creek (FOSC), said at the organization’s December meeting in Silver Spring.
FOSC had gathered that night to hear State Delegate Al Carr from District 18 discuss the possibility of enacting a similar bag law Maryland next year. Carr worked on a bill about bags last year in Annapolis, but was unable to get the support needed from other regions of the state. He suspects the fact that it was an election year during tight budget times made candidates blanch at the idea of imposing any kind of new fee on anything.
Carr and State Senator Jamie Raskin, however, have had tremendous constituent support in our local area for their proposed bill, which would place a five cent fee on all single-use plastic and paper bags distributed at carryout food establishments and liquor stores in the state. Raskin’s supporters even handed out reusable bags imprinted with his name to promote his support of bag reduction at parades and other events over the summer, and Carr thinks his own sponsorship of the bill helped him become the “top vote getter” in the general election in November.
“Support the bag bill and you’ll be supported by the voters,” Carr told me over the phone recently. He plans to take that message to Annapolis again this year, where he hopes to gain new support for the legislation.
Some have worried that a bag fee might disproportionally impact low income families in Maryland. To answer this concern, reusable bags would be distributed in neighborhoods where poverty remains a constant problem and the bag bill’s authors say a large portion of the money collected from a new bag law could be used to fund environmental restoration projects. The funds would most likely be made available through grants from the Chesapeake Bay Trust.
In urban areas like those around DC and Baltimore, it is often the impoverished communities which suffer the most from pollution’s many ills. To have the bag fees available for environmental projects in such locations would add an extra bonus to the bag reduction law.
Maryland’s Trash Free Alliance has started a blog (http://www.blogger.com/www.trashfreemaryland.org) about the bag bill for those who are seeking more up-to-date information as the legislative season gets under way this year.
When I visited the site last week I was really entertained by entries about activists in California who are working on bag reduction programs. You can find, for example, a link to a “mockumentary” narrated by actor Jeremy Irons about the “life” of a plastic bag in his state’s “wild urban environment.” You can also find pictures of protestors in San Jose who staged a protest at a city council meeting, complete with people dressed in Bag Monster costumes made entirely of plastic bags. What surprises me is that this same kind of political theater hasn’t happened in Takoma Park… at least not yet!
The Sligo Naturalist for January 2011
December was a very windy month. I spent a lot of mornings walking my dog through an empty park with my collar turned up against the cold, watching the tumbleweeds roll across the abandoned soccer fields.
Only wait!… those weren’t tumbleweeds. They were plastic shopping bags!
One particularly blustery morning I worked with my kids to untangle no less than five of them from a single brambled corner of our local park. We hurried to catch them and dispose of them before they sailed towards our favorite tall oak trees. Sometimes the bags make their way to the highest branches there, mocking us with their crackly calling sounds for years.
The bags can be more than just noisy and unsightly; they are also increasingly seen as a potential health hazard. Many times they make their way to streams and rivers. In fact, some past trash clean-ups in our area have recorded close to 30,000 of them along the Anacostia’s banks – and that only includes the ones which volunteers were able to snag by hand and record for the official count. The ones that remain behind drape themselves across the shrubs that line river banks like parodies of weeping willow branches, sometimes strangling animals and suffocating aquatic animals who mistake them for prey.
What’s more, the plastic in the bags does not biodegrade -- it simply becomes part of the industrial flotsam which is now accumulating in the world’s oceans. There is growing scientific concern about the effect the plastic particles from bags and other kinds trash are having on the planet’s food webs. The fish eat the plastic… we eat the fish… we all consume the pollution.
So with all of these things in mind I heartily celebrated the January 1 anniversary of the new DC bag law. It has been one full year since the District imposed a five cent fee on all plastic bags given out in the city during retail transactions, and by all accounts the new law has been a resounding success. Retail bag use has declined by 80 percent since last winter.
Groups that work to clean the rivers have even noticed a reduction in trash. The Alice Ferguson Foundation, a group that works along the region’s rivers each year, saw a marked reduction in the amount of bags reported during their events last spring.
“Plastic bags were down sixty percent at the clean-ups,” Julie Lawson from the Maryland’s Trash Free Alliance told me. “That was only three months after the law went into effect.”
Initially, there was doubt about how it would all work, even from those in environmental quarters.
"I was really shocked at how effective the small fee was in DC. You wouldn't think that five cents a bag would change anyone's behavior. But apparently it really helped make people think twice about needing a bag," Michael Wilpers, President of the Friends of Sligo Creek (FOSC), said at the organization’s December meeting in Silver Spring.
FOSC had gathered that night to hear State Delegate Al Carr from District 18 discuss the possibility of enacting a similar bag law Maryland next year. Carr worked on a bill about bags last year in Annapolis, but was unable to get the support needed from other regions of the state. He suspects the fact that it was an election year during tight budget times made candidates blanch at the idea of imposing any kind of new fee on anything.
Carr and State Senator Jamie Raskin, however, have had tremendous constituent support in our local area for their proposed bill, which would place a five cent fee on all single-use plastic and paper bags distributed at carryout food establishments and liquor stores in the state. Raskin’s supporters even handed out reusable bags imprinted with his name to promote his support of bag reduction at parades and other events over the summer, and Carr thinks his own sponsorship of the bill helped him become the “top vote getter” in the general election in November.
“Support the bag bill and you’ll be supported by the voters,” Carr told me over the phone recently. He plans to take that message to Annapolis again this year, where he hopes to gain new support for the legislation.
Some have worried that a bag fee might disproportionally impact low income families in Maryland. To answer this concern, reusable bags would be distributed in neighborhoods where poverty remains a constant problem and the bag bill’s authors say a large portion of the money collected from a new bag law could be used to fund environmental restoration projects. The funds would most likely be made available through grants from the Chesapeake Bay Trust.
In urban areas like those around DC and Baltimore, it is often the impoverished communities which suffer the most from pollution’s many ills. To have the bag fees available for environmental projects in such locations would add an extra bonus to the bag reduction law.
Maryland’s Trash Free Alliance has started a blog (http://www.blogger.com/www.trashfreemaryland.org) about the bag bill for those who are seeking more up-to-date information as the legislative season gets under way this year.
When I visited the site last week I was really entertained by entries about activists in California who are working on bag reduction programs. You can find, for example, a link to a “mockumentary” narrated by actor Jeremy Irons about the “life” of a plastic bag in his state’s “wild urban environment.” You can also find pictures of protestors in San Jose who staged a protest at a city council meeting, complete with people dressed in Bag Monster costumes made entirely of plastic bags. What surprises me is that this same kind of political theater hasn’t happened in Takoma Park… at least not yet!
This article was originally published in the Voice newspapers of Silver Spring, Takoma Park and Kensington.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Bag the Bags in MD, too, I hope!
Maryland Delagate Al Carr (D-Dist 18) has once again introduced legislation that would impose a fee on shopping bags. The law would follow the introduction and implementation of a similar law in DC this year, and money raised would go to fund restoration projects in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
A lot of environmental groups are pulling for this bill. Anyone who has ever walked along any creek in the area can easily understand why. Those damned disposable shopping bags are are nuisance and they are everywhere, waving noisily from trees, tangled in the roots along the banks, and appearing like jellyfish under the water as it speeds through the watershed on its way to the ocean.
When any of the local stream groups hosts a clean up, the sheer number of bags reported in the trash heap is astonishing. Friends of Rock Creek, for example, reported that at a clean up last year they pulled 7000 bags out of their system. The Anacostia Watershed Society has reported similarly horrifying numbers.
Carr introduced similar legislation last year in coordination with the bill passed in DC. Carr pulled it out before it left committee level, reportedly to give the DC bill a chance to succeed first. (You can read the Gazette's story on the topic here.)
What is funny to me about this is that any retailer would fight this. Plastics manufacturers, sure. I see that. But retailers? C'mon. They stand only to gain from such a bill, especially if everyone in the whole state has to comply. For years they've been giving away something for free that they themselves have to pay for, and now they will be able to charge and recoup some costs.
I suppose one could argue that all of the added "free" advertising on each "free" disposable plastic bag has been good for the stores' bottom line.
Maybe.
But it doesn't make me feel good about a store when I see their logo emblazoned on a bag which is caught in the branches of a lovely old tree when I'm out on a walk. It doesn't make me think positively of their store. It makes me depressed. It makes me think of their store as a giant pollution source.
Better advertising comes in the form of the reusable bags that people so proudly tote to places other than the grocery store, like the ones you see being used to carry library books, or pool toys, or Christmas gifts when people aren't going to the grocery store.
Most of us don't need a bag when we shop anyway, and changing our habits by keeping shopping bags in the car is really just NOT that hard.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
DC Says: Skip the Bag to Save the River
As noted earlier in the year on this blog, Washington, DC is joining other cities all around the globe in an effort to reduce feral shopping bag pollution.
As of January 1, DC businesses that sell food or alcohol must charge 5 cents for each disposable paper or plastic carryout bag distributed during a purchase.
According to the District Department of the Environment's website, the business keeps 1 cent, or 2 cents if it offers a rebate when you bring your own bag. The remaining 3 or 4 cents go to the new Anacostia River Protection Fund.
DDOE will be administering this fund and will use it to provide reusable bags, educate the public about litter, and support clean up efforts in the Anacostia river.
Concerns have been raised about those with limited income; no one wants to see the grocery bill climb for people who are already feeling the pinch of the tight economy. In an effort to address those concerns, the city is partnering with a large pharmacy chain to provide resuable bags to those who need them the most.
Personally, I am all for this program because those who feel the tight pinch of the economy are also often forced to live with the fall out of the polluted Anacostia River. This initiative will create a new stream of funding for helping ameliorate some of those problems.
You can find out and help promote these bag give away locations at the DDE's Skip the Bag to Save the River website.
As of January 1, DC businesses that sell food or alcohol must charge 5 cents for each disposable paper or plastic carryout bag distributed during a purchase.
According to the District Department of the Environment's website, the business keeps 1 cent, or 2 cents if it offers a rebate when you bring your own bag. The remaining 3 or 4 cents go to the new Anacostia River Protection Fund.
DDOE will be administering this fund and will use it to provide reusable bags, educate the public about litter, and support clean up efforts in the Anacostia river.
Concerns have been raised about those with limited income; no one wants to see the grocery bill climb for people who are already feeling the pinch of the tight economy. In an effort to address those concerns, the city is partnering with a large pharmacy chain to provide resuable bags to those who need them the most.
Personally, I am all for this program because those who feel the tight pinch of the economy are also often forced to live with the fall out of the polluted Anacostia River. This initiative will create a new stream of funding for helping ameliorate some of those problems.
You can find out and help promote these bag give away locations at the DDE's Skip the Bag to Save the River website.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Bag the Bags, the Struggle Continues
Alert: the battle against the bags continues in Washington, with things looking very good indeed for those who wish to Ban the Bags.
A couple of months ago I blogged about this... now it may become a reality.
Check out the Wash Post story from today's Metro section for more details.
For those of you without a subscription or online access to the paper the details are as follows.
The DC Council voted unanimously.... can I write that again.... UNANIMOUSLY... to place a five cent tax on paper and plastic bags. The goal is to discourage their use and encourage the use of canvas or cloth reusable bags, while at the same time reduce a huge trash problem in our city. And, even better, a significant chunk of the money raised by this new tax will go towards helping the floundering Anacostia River here in the capitol.
According to the Anacostia Watershed Society, "plastic bags make up 50% of the approximately 17,000* tons of plastic products entering the river system each year."
A similar bill was introduced in MD earlier this year. I am not sure what happened to the MD bill, but if I find out I'll post details.
A couple of months ago I blogged about this... now it may become a reality.
Check out the Wash Post story from today's Metro section for more details.
For those of you without a subscription or online access to the paper the details are as follows.
The DC Council voted unanimously.... can I write that again.... UNANIMOUSLY... to place a five cent tax on paper and plastic bags. The goal is to discourage their use and encourage the use of canvas or cloth reusable bags, while at the same time reduce a huge trash problem in our city. And, even better, a significant chunk of the money raised by this new tax will go towards helping the floundering Anacostia River here in the capitol.
According to the Anacostia Watershed Society, "plastic bags make up 50% of the approximately 17,000* tons of plastic products entering the river system each year."
A similar bill was introduced in MD earlier this year. I am not sure what happened to the MD bill, but if I find out I'll post details.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
A Bill to Bag the Bags
One morning last week I was taking my dog for a walk in the early hours and came upon my friend and fellow dog owner, Ed. Both of us stood exchanging morning greetings with hands full of trash. Ed had found an entire bundle of magazines, dumped in the park overnight. I had my usual trashy quarry -- a large plastic bottle and several bags which had blown across the soccer fields during the previous day. I was taking mine home to recycle. Ed was dragging his to the garbage can, since it was too heavy to carry while he walked with a leashed dog in hand.
Ed and I and many other dog owners who hit the park early in the morning often find our selves on trash patrol. Mostly, I hunt down the blowing plastic bags, hoping to pin them down and collect them before they end up out of reach in the high branches of our neighborhood's aging oaks and maples. When they get stuck up there they drive me crazy. They are noisy, crackling, bright blue or white flags reminding us all how polluted our environment has become. I hate them, and have made it a personal mission to pick them up and take them to my home trash can whenever and where ever I can. If they aren't too dirty I even try to recycle them.
Last year for Lent, I even gave up plastic bags altogether, figuring that I could train myself to remember to bring my cloth ones to the store if I REALLY tried. It worked. Now I have a wonderful collection of the canvas ones in each car, and even when I shop for clothes I eschew those dreaded plastic sacks and proudly carry my stuff home in a resuable tote.
For these and and many other reasons, I was excited to hear about a bill, introduced by Maryland Delegate Al Carr (District 18) that would place a five cent fee on plastic retail bags. According to a press release put out by Carr, the "Chesapeake Bay Restoration Consumer Retail Choice Act of 2009" will put a new focus on reducing the amount of trash that enters Maryland waterways and will raise money for Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays 2010 Trust Fund. Delegate Carr joins Washington DC Council Member Tommy Wells who will introduce similar legislation that would fund restoration of the Anacostia River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
The bill, now labeled as HB 1210, had its first hearing on March 11. I will be following the news regarding this bill with great hope. Not only might it raise money for the Bay, it could also help prompt more people to bring their own bags when they go shopping.
(Special thanks to Sarah Morse of the Little Falls Watershed Association for bringing this bill to my attention. Sarah asks all Marylanders reading to call their delegates and voice support for this bill. )
Ed and I and many other dog owners who hit the park early in the morning often find our selves on trash patrol. Mostly, I hunt down the blowing plastic bags, hoping to pin them down and collect them before they end up out of reach in the high branches of our neighborhood's aging oaks and maples. When they get stuck up there they drive me crazy. They are noisy, crackling, bright blue or white flags reminding us all how polluted our environment has become. I hate them, and have made it a personal mission to pick them up and take them to my home trash can whenever and where ever I can. If they aren't too dirty I even try to recycle them.
Last year for Lent, I even gave up plastic bags altogether, figuring that I could train myself to remember to bring my cloth ones to the store if I REALLY tried. It worked. Now I have a wonderful collection of the canvas ones in each car, and even when I shop for clothes I eschew those dreaded plastic sacks and proudly carry my stuff home in a resuable tote.
For these and and many other reasons, I was excited to hear about a bill, introduced by Maryland Delegate Al Carr (District 18) that would place a five cent fee on plastic retail bags. According to a press release put out by Carr, the "Chesapeake Bay Restoration Consumer Retail Choice Act of 2009" will put a new focus on reducing the amount of trash that enters Maryland waterways and will raise money for Chesapeake and Atlantic Coastal Bays 2010 Trust Fund. Delegate Carr joins Washington DC Council Member Tommy Wells who will introduce similar legislation that would fund restoration of the Anacostia River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
The bill, now labeled as HB 1210, had its first hearing on March 11. I will be following the news regarding this bill with great hope. Not only might it raise money for the Bay, it could also help prompt more people to bring their own bags when they go shopping.
(Special thanks to Sarah Morse of the Little Falls Watershed Association for bringing this bill to my attention. Sarah asks all Marylanders reading to call their delegates and voice support for this bill. )
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