Montgomery County Banned the Foam

I'm delighted to report that this morning the Montgomery County Council voted 8-0 to ban polystyrene foam food packaging!

Rock Creek in Montgomery County, Fall 2014

The law in many ways mirrors the law passed in DC last summer:

- On January 1, 2016, restaurants and carryouts will be banned from using expanded polystyrene foam food packaging (like clamshells, plates and cups). County offices and contractors will also be required to use recyclable or compostable alternatives for all disposable food packaging.
- On January 1, 2017, all disposable food packaging at restaurants and carryouts must also be recyclable or compostable.

The Montgomery County ban also includes sale of foam food packaging for consumer use (like 100-packs of cups you might buy at the grocery store) and foam packing peanuts, effective January 2016.

The ban does not apply to Montgomery County Public Schools, but the system has already moved away from foam trays to paper ones, as of this school year. They do still have some foam cups and plates on the premises, but continue to seek cost-effective alternatives.

This is huge. Polystyrene foam comprises a quarter to as much as 40 percent of the floatable trash collected in the Anacostia River watershed. The tiny pieces it breaks into release toxic chemicals into the water, and absorb other chemicals--and then they are often eaten by fish and other aquatic life, polluting our food chain.

We are thrilled at the regional approach that DC and Montgomery County have taken, and look forward to streets and streams with less plastic pollution!

Many thanks to the Councilmembers who worked to get this legislation passed, including Council President George Leventhal, Transportation & Environment Committee Chair Roger Berliner, and of course our dedicated sponsor, Hans Riemer.

Thanks also to all the Trash Free Maryland members who worked to support this bill, including Surfrider Foundation - DC Chapter, Alice Ferguson Foundation, Anacostia Watershed Society, Anacostia Riverkeeper, Audubon Naturalist Society, Potomac Conservancy, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Rock Creek Conservancy, Neighbors of the Northwest Branch, Hiking Along LLC, Sierra Club, and Conservation Montgomery.

Great work, everyone! Now, onward!

Thank you to all of our donors!

It's been a crazy week but I want to take a moment to say thank you to all of the amazing people, organizations, and businesses that contributed to making 2014 a successful year for us. It was our first full year of funded operations, and we accomplished more than any of us on the board or staff even dreamed possible. And we couldn't do it without the help of everyone listed here:

Want to help us make 2015 even better? You can contribute online here, or join our email list to learn about more opportunities throughout the year.

Our 2015 Maryland legislative agenda

On Wednesday, a new General Assembly will be sworn in, ushering in a new legislative session that may run very differently from the past four years. Even though the Assembly still has a veto-proof Democratic majority, Republican Governor-elect Hogan, a clear anti-tax mandate from voters, and a looming budget deficit have many progressive campaigns in a defensive posture.

Trash, however, has proven to affect everyone, from urban neighborhoods to rural farmland to the fishing community in the Chesapeake Bay. There are also a lot of ways to tackle the trash problem, and our goal is to work with the new Assembly to find common ground on solutions to keep making progress on reducing trash pollution across Maryland.

That said, we are focusing our efforts on three campaigns in 2015:

- Plastic bags. Bag bans and fees are proliferating rapidly around the US, with California passing the first state-level ban on plastic bags in 2014. In Los Angeles County, a two-year-old ban on plastic bags (with a 10-cent charge on paper) has reduced total disposable bag use by 90 percent. That's all the plastic bags, plus a drop in paper bags. It's an incredibly compelling solution to get shoppers to use reusable bags.

As we know in nearby DC, a 60-percent drop in bag use following a disposable bag fee turned into a 60-percent drop in bags found in streams and parks. Imagine cutting bag pollution in our state by 90 percent!

Bags are also a tremendous expense for retailers, sometimes as much as their third-highest overhead cost. If they no longer have to buy plastic bags, and can cut paper bag use, that savings can go back into the business, spurring investment, growth, and better pay and benefits for workers.

In 2015, Trash Free Maryland proposes that Maryland ban plastic bags and put a small fee on paper bags, motivating consumers to use reusable bags. The program pays for itself, reduces litter (and the inherent cleanup costs), and saves retailers money.

- Microbeads. A tube of toothpaste can contain as many as 300,000 plastic beads, all for color. (See those blue specks on your toothbrush?) A bottle of face wash, too. (Those are for exfoliating dead skin.) But they all wash down the drain, slip through wastewater treatment plants, and wind up in our rivers and the Bay.

Made of polyethylene, the beads absorb toxic chemicals like pesticides and fertilizers, becoming toxic balls that aquatic life mistake for food. Dentists even report finding tiny blue beads in their patients' gums. The beads are quite visible in samples from our recent Chesapeake Bay Trash Trawl.

Natural alternatives are readily available, including walnut shells, apricot stones, and even salt or sugar. Instead of washing synthetic beads into our waterways, we need to push manufacturers to redesign their products. Several major manufacturers have agreed to voluntary phaseouts, but their timelines are a decade away. Can we afford to let our fish continue to mistake these beads for food, polluting our food chain from the bottom up?

Virginia, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Hawaii, and California will all be considering legislation to ban the sale of microbead-laden products this year. Like the ban on phosphorus in detergents, these state-level bans will drive manufacturers to reformulate their products nationwide and prevent this plastic pollution from increasing on a global scale.

Trash Free Maryland asks the General Assembly to ban the sale of personal care products containing microbeads, to protect our local fisheries and the Bay.

- Enforcement. While source reduction is key, we also need to get serious about penalizing the people who contribute to the trash pollution problem. Last year we passed a bill to put points on the drivers licenses of people convicted of illegal dumping, creating a statewide penalty system and a more meaningful punishment.

We know that people litter as a rebellious act, in part because they believe they won't get caught--or if they do, the punishment will be light. Bolstering enforcement has tremendous potential to not just stop repeat offenders, but prevent other littering and dumping behavior too.

We are eager to work with legislators to identify targeted solutions, whether it's mandating community service picking up trash, streamlining the citation process to make convictions easier (and more likely to stick), or specific approaches for problem items like tires or construction debris.

We'll also be tracking related legislation as it's introduced, and working with sponsors and other advocates to pass good policies to achieve a trash free Maryland. Stay tuned for updates, and have a great session!

State and federal agencies mandate trash cleanup in Baltimore

This week the US Environmental Protection Agency gave final approval to the state's mandate that Baltimore City and Baltimore County clean up trash that makes its way to the Baltimore Harbor. The Harbor (officially the Middle and Northwest Branches of the Patapsco River, including Jones Falls and Gwynns Falls) was declared impaired by trash under the Clean Water Act in 2008, and local jurisdictions are now on the hook to remove nearly 50,000 pounds of trash from the watershed annually. They'll have five years to ramp up to that level before the plan will be reviewed, and potentially face financial penalties if they can't comply.

Both the City and County have long recognized the problem of trash pollution, and the environmental and public costs of it. In anticipation of this mandate, both jurisdictions have recently stepped up street sweeping dramatically. They are also exploring ways to change public behavior to prevent litter in the first place, from encouraging sustainable practices in homes and businesses, to increased enforcement, to legislation to control commonly littered items.

As Halle VanDerGaag, Blue Water Baltimore executive director (and Trash Free Maryland board member) told CBS Baltimore, "We've all been talking about cleaning up trash, but this really takes it from a voluntary effort to a mandatory one."

Trash Free Maryland submitted comments when the regulations were drafted. Known as a Total Maximum Daily Load, these regulations stipulate cleanup requirements for numerous water pollutants. In this area, the most famous TMDL is an umbrella set of regulations for the Chesapeake Bay, to reduce the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment. Normally TMDLs set a limit for the maximum amount of the pollutant allowable in the water (hence the name Total Maximum Daily Load). Trash is relatively new in the regulatory world, with the Harbor TMDL just the third in the country (the Los Angeles River and Anacostia River being the other two).

Unlike the Bay TMDL, the Harbor and Anacostia TMDLs both scrap the idea of a maximum load and instead require removal of a specified amount of trash, based on estimates of the amount of trash polluting the water. While we're happy to have something to mandate cleanup, the removal approach is troubling for a few reasons:

- It assumes the baseline estimates are accurate.
- It doesn't factor in population growth, or a population that generates more trash over time.
- It incentivizes cleanup and engineered physical structures, which cost more than prevention.
- It disincentives prevention--calculating the weight of trash pollution prevented by, for example, an outreach campaign is at best an estimate.
- Measuring success is much easier for downstream jurisdictions (where capture is easier) than upstream ones (where trash is more dispersed).

The Harbor TMDL document does include an appendix to guide jurisdictions in developing their plans to meet the requirements, including suggestions for how to incorporate source reduction and other prevention activities. This appendix is important, and we're glad the Maryland Department of Environment heard our and our partners' comments.

After all, as the authors say on page 44, "the best way to reduce trash going into the Harbor is to persuade residents not to throw it onto streets and sidewalks in the first place."