When did we become a plastic society?

Take a couple of minutes and check out this great video by Jeff Bridges for the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Share the video with your friends, and then get involved with us to make a difference right here in Maryland!

When did we become a plastic society?

Posted by Jeff Bridges on Monday, March 28, 2016

Announcing the Chesapeake Bay Trash Trawl with 5 Gyres

We are very excited to announce a great new project coming up next month!

5 Gyres, renowned for research on plastic pollution in the ocean's gyres, is coming to Maryland in November to help us learn more about plastic pollution in our own Chesapeake Bay. We know our rivers are polluted, and we know of the growing plastic soup in the North Atlantic, but little work has been published about the waters in between.

We'll be sailing for four days from November 12 through 15, on a 42-foot Sabre Sloop out of Deale. The team will drag a manta trawl to sample of microplastics, giving us data to estimate the types of plastic and density of these pieces in bay waters. We'll also conduct a qualitative survey of larger trash floating on the surface.

5 Gyres trawl in the North Atlantic Ocean

But the best part is the team we are taking with us. We don't want to just see what's out there for ourselves--we want to show you! We are inviting an impressive list of policymakers and other influencers to come along and help with the sampling and surveys. We expect to have a few seats left for the interested public. If you'd like to join us, email Julie at julie@trashfreemaryland.org for more information.

We are also excited to be working with the National Aquarium to get the word out about our voyages and our findings. Be sure to follow us and the Aquarium on social media for the latest updates.

Many thanks to Trash Free Maryland member Chris Charbonneau, owner of local reusable bag company Joey Totes, for providing the boat and captaining the trips. If your company is interested in supporting the project as a sponsor, email us!

Prince George's County one big step closer to a bag fee

This morning delegates that represent Prince George's County in the Maryland General Assembly voted 12-9 in support of HB895, which would give the County the authority to enact a five-cent fee on disposable plastic and paper bags. The bill now moves to the Environmental Matters Committee of the House, and then to the floor of the full House of Delegates. In considering local bills like this one, though, those committee and floor votes are for the most part a formality, as the current legislature prefers to support the counties' wishes.

The County's senators must also support the bill, but it passed easily last session and no senators are known to have changed their position.

This vote has been the biggest hurdle in the process so far. Opponents of the bill--namely the manufacturers of plastic bags--have paid a fortune in public affairs and outreach expenses, with thousands of robocalls misleading citizens and flooding delegate offices. The County Affairs subcommittee was unable to reach constitutional majority on either a favorable or unfavorable recommendation (and even on "no recommendation"), but after three such votes it was eligible to move up to the full delegation anyway.

The bill's supporters withstood the pressure and protected home rule, allowing the County Council to now take up the bag fee this fall. The authority will take effect in October. The Council voted 8-0, with one abstention, last month to support this measure. Should the statewide bag fee bill also pass, the Council will have six months to pass the county's program in order to be exempt from the statewide system.

The supporting delegates were sponsor Barbara Frush, Ben Barnes, Dereck Davis, Tawanna Gaines, Anne Healey, James Hubbard, Jolene Ivey, Doyle Neimann, Joseline Pena-Melnyk, Justin Ross, Michael Summers, and Kris Valderrama. Delegate Ivey attended despite being on bereavement leave following the death of her father last week.

In brighter news...

A roundup of recent success stories:

Brownsville, Texas, instituted a ban on plastic bags in January, and residents are seeing the results:

Brownsville resident Juan Peña says he has noticed that the city looks a lot cleaner.

Travel around any part of the city and you probably will not see plastic bags clinging to fences or discarded on the roadways.

Peña says West Brownsville especially looks cleaner than it did about 11 months ago. He says the decision by city officials to implement a plastic bag in January was a good thing.

As part of the transition, stores could continue to give out plastic bags if they added a $1 surcharge to the transaction as an environmental fee. The bulk of the fee goes to the city -- about $250,000 was collected and used for litter pickup and as an incentive for bulk waste disposal.

Portland, Oregon's plastic bag ban took effect on October 15. Mayor Sam Adams expects the transition to be smooth, but hopes curmudgeons will blame him, and not the cashiers:



And Chicago is now considering a plastic bag ordinance as well. Alderman Joe Moreno is proposing a ban in order to prevent a scenario he recently described:

"I am, right now, I'm at [a] school in my ward, I'm about to meet with the principal, I'm on the playground," said Moreno. "And I can count eight bags just sitting here...it's windy out today, bouncing off the fences in this little playground area....Someone's got to clean those up, and it's city taxpayers that pay for that."

We reap what we sow

Shocking video of a canal in Naples after a storms:



Why do we do this to ourselves? Thanks to @FlotsamDiaries for the tip.

Two Articles Worth a Read

A couple of good articles have crossed my Twitter feed in the past week. (Follow @TrashFreeMD for regular updates!)

First, our friends in Oregon are working to pass a statewide bag ban. This effort follows on a successful campaign to ban plastic bags in Portland. Sightline Daily posted a story last week, Three (Unexpected) Reasons to Support Oregon's Plastic Bag Ban. Among several good points, the article describes the problem bags are for recyclers. That's right--while industry opponents claim we can solve the state's litter problem by just increasing recycling, the people who actually do the recycling say the bags cost them money:

Closer to home, plastic bags have been a real problem for recyclers. The bags clog up recycling machinery so badly that one Oregon-based recycler recently estimated that 20 to 30 percent of their total labor costs were related to plastic bags -- pulling them from the rest of the recycling stream, untangling them from their equipment, and stopping all work when bags clog up the machines -- and about 7 percent of otherwise recyclable paper has to be landfilled because of plastic contamination. So plastic bags in the recycling stream likely undermine the effectiveness of recycling efforts overall.

The second article comes from the Earth Island Journal and its blog, the EnvironmentaList. Writer Amy Westervelt examines the parallels between the campaigns waged by Big Tobacco in the 80s and 90s, and the campaigns mounted now by "Big Plastic," namely the American Chemistry Council and other lobbyists representing plastics manufacturers. Big Plastic is filing lawsuits to fight successful legislation efforts, pushing for de minimus clauses in regulatory legislation like limits on BPA content in baby bottles, and pushing for citizen's "rights" to a product that ultimately harms them and the world around them.

But Big Plastic's other tactic is more insidious: using environmental messaging to continue a wasteful and toxic practice of continued consumption of single-use plastics.

There are several examples of this, but the most insidious are the industry's use of recycling as a justification for the continued use of disposable plastics, and its sponsorship of various research expeditions and conferences around ocean plastic pollution (which it euphemistically calls "marine debris").

The American Chemistry Council was one of the lead sponsors of last week's 5th International Marine Debris Conference, a gathering of 400 professionals and activists seeking ways to prevent ever more trash from collecting in our oceans' gyres and on our coastlines. While they purported to support efforts to reduce this pollution, they also took to Twitter to attack data from Washington, DC's bag fee experience.

Of course they don't want to reduce our use of plastics any more than Philip Morris wanted us to buy fewer cigarettes. But by appearing to be socially responsible, whether through sponsoring these events or providing ashtrays to community groups, they both can blunt some of the criticism they've earned for propagating dangerous products.

Tell me about this bag fee.

The Clean the Streams and Beautify the Bay Act (SB602/HB1034) proposes to require shoppers in Maryland to pay five cents for each single-use plastic and paper bag they take from stores. The money raised from the fee is split between the store, the state, and the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

Why are we addressing bags?

Plastic bags make up a substantial proportion of trash in our region. A 2008 study in Washington, DC, found that a quarter of the trash in the Anacostia River, and half the trash in its tributaries, was plastic bags. While beverage containers, food wrappers, and other waste were also common, plastic bags are easily addressed because they are easily replaced with alternatives (reusable bags) or even unnecessary. (A bottle, on the other hand, is part of the product.)

We need to do something, and soon. The Anacostia River (with 80 percent of its watershed in Maryland) is so polluted that it was declared impaired for trash under the Clean Water Act. Baltimore Harbor is close to a similar designation.

If the trash studies find mostly plastic bags, why include paper bags too?

While currently most stores give out bags for free, they actually cost the store money to purchase. That cost is then added to the cost of the goods and passed on to the customer.

According to Safeway, paper bags cost about twice as much as plastic bags (five cents vs. two cents, on average). If plastic bags are the only target, customers will shift primarily to paper bags (as seen in San Francisco following their ban on plastic bags at large grocery stores), increasing the cost to the retailer.

Since the goal is to reduce the use of disposable bags with no negative impact on the store, both plastic and paper bags must be addressed.

The environmental impact of paper bags (in production, transportation, and recycling) is also not significantly better than that of plastic bags, even though littered paper bags do disintegrate in the environment (which is why non-degradable plastic bags are more common as pollution, while both types are commonly littered).

Why is the fee five cents, and not 20 cents (or higher)?

Five cents is closely tied to the cost of plastic and paper bags, as borne by the retailer. Charging that amount makes the cost of the bag more transparent to the consumer and allows them to make a more informed choice.

It's also not necessary to use a higher fee. Washington, DC, uses a five-cent fee and saw bag use drop by 50 to 80 percent almost immediately. The nickel is enough to get the customer's attention without being burdensome to most people.

Is the fee burdensome? Doesn't it hurt the low-income?

It doesn't have to. If a shopper always brings reusable bags and refuses a bag if s/he doesn't need one, s/he never has to pay the fee. While reusable bags cost $1-3 in many stores (compared to the hidden cost of "free" bags of $15-37.50 yearly, as calculated by Anacostia Watershed Society), the revenue from the fee will help cover the cost of free bags for needy residents, distributed by the state. There are also other ways to get free bags to those who need them, including bag drives and distribution through food pantries and service organizations.

Bread for the City, a DC food pantry, has distributed tens of thousands of reusable bags to its clients. Those bags were donated by corporations, community members, and the District. Bread has subsequently bought fewer plastic bags for distributing its food, saving the organization several thousand dollars. Its clients prefer the cloth bags for their capacity, durability, and softer straps, making them easier to carry, and many clients bring their bags back each week.

Why not just exempt transactions using WIC or SNAP (food stamps)?

One grocery chain tried to fight DC's proposed fee by telling public housing residents that the fee would hurt them. It backfired--the residents said those claims implied that they didn't care about the environment and couldn't make the choice.

Also, much effort has gone into making WIC and SNAP transactions appear more like cash transactions to reduce any stigma or embarrassment. An exemption would call attention to those customers.

Doesn't this just raise money for the state? My taxes are high enough.

The goal of this bill is not to raise money, but to reduce the use of bags. (Ultimately, that will reduce the cost of litter pickup and other pollution mitigation currently borne by the state and jurisdictions. And that can reduce tax burden.)

DC's Chief Financial Officer estimated that the fee would raise $3.5 million in the first year. In fact it only raised $2 million in 2010, because bag use declined so much more quickly than anticipated. This is a victory--fewer bags are making their way into the environment as litter.

The proceeds of the fee are divided between the store, the state, and the Chesapeake Bay Trust:

- The store keeps one cent of the fee to cover bookkeeping expenses. If the store offers a reusable bag credit program (giving the customer five cents back for bringing a reusable bag, as Giant and Target currently do), the store keeps two cents. This will help promote the consumer shift to reusable bags.

- A portion of the revenue is allocated to the Department of Human Resources, which is charged with purchasing reusable bags and distributing them for free to needy residents.

- The rest of the revenue is directed to the Chesapeake Bay Trust, which works to improve the quality of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries by offering competitive grants to municipalities, counties, and nonprofit organizations across the state. The Trust currently receives proceeds from the specialty license plate and other sources and is chartered by the General Assembly, but it is also independently managed, giving it some protection from budgetary fluctuations.

Why don't we just ban bags?

Bans don't give consumers a choice. While Kauai and Maui have banned bags, the state of Hawaii is still considering a fee.

Why don't we just push recycling more?

We've had recycling for more than 20 years and the litter problem is only getting worse.

Americans consume 8 billion pounds of plastic bags every year. In 2006, 590 million pounds were recycled in the US and Canada, leaving over 7 billion pounds to be discarded. In 2009, 364 million pounds were recycled in the US and Canada (226 million pounds less than in 2006) due to decreased demand for the recycling of plastic bags.

We cannot recycle our way out of this problem.

Isn't this bad for plastic manufacturers? What about jobs?

Businesses are changing all the time to meet consumer demand. Where the demand is shrinking for disposable bags, it's expanding for reusable bags. Most plastic bags are manufactured in China, while opportunities abound for American small businesses offering a more durable alternative.

A Big Week for Bag Bills

Plastic litter reduction proposals are sweeping the nation, with lots of activity just this week:

Yesterday, the Environment and Natural Resources Committee of Oregon's Senate heard public debate on SB 536, which would ban disposable plastic bags and put a five-cent charge on paper sacks. This legislation seeks to bring consistency to the state's bag regulations, as Portland has already passed such a ban. Surfrider Foundation's Portland Chapter has been a leading proponent of the Ban the Bag campaign in the state.

Today, February 9, Connecticut's Environment Committee is debating a proposal to put a 5-cent fee on both plastic and paper shopping bags (like DC has and Maryland could have). Again, this would provide consistency across the state, as some stores and municipalities already have bans. You can watch the debate online starting at 11 am, or later via the archive.

And of course tomorrow the Trash Free Maryland Alliance is hosting our Waste in Our Waterways panel at the Lowe House Office Building in Annapolis. Join us for a discussion of why Maryland needs the Clean the Streams and Beautify the Bay Act of 2011, followed by a screening of the film Oceans of Plastic. It all starts at 11:30 in room 142.

Exploring the alternatives

By Barb Krupiarz, Sierra Club


Estimates of plastic bag usage across the globe are between 500 billion and 1 trillion each year. With the conservative estimate, that is still almost 1 million bags used per minute. The US EPA estimates that less than 5% are recycled each year. Even if some bags are reused, the worldwide litter problem from plastic bags is still immense. And, the cost of these “free” bags to retailers is over $4 billion each year – another cost tacked on to the consumer.

So, what are the alternatives? Some say to recycle more. But, at 1 million bags used per minute, can we keep up with that rate for recycling? The American Chemistry Council sites the plastic lumber manufacturer, Trex, as the largest recycler of plastic bags in the U.S. with 1.5 billion bags recycled every year and making up 10% of their product. The problem is that U.S. consumers use 100 billion bags per year and the fact remains that plastics are a major cause of ocean pollution. In 2006, the U.N. estimated that oceans have 46,000 pieces of plastic in them for every square mile.

What about switching to biodegradable, cornstarch-based bags? There are several problems with this alternative. The first is that the cost to manufacture these bags is currently much higher than the cost of conventional plastic bags. These bags are made from roughly 5% starch, but also a petroleum-based polyester and don't really degrade in a home compost bins or landfills. Finally, these bags cannot be recycled with ordinary bags and contaminate the recycling stream.

What about recyclable paper instead? While paper recycling is readily available, paper bag manufacturing still requires large amounts of natural resources and causes a significant amount of pollution.

The debate about plastic vs. paper still goes on today, but the bottom line is that the best solution eliminating disposable bags that have a life span of 12 minutes and replacing them with reusable bags.