Looking back on 2015

It looks like it's been a while since I've posted any updates here, but there are lots of posts on our Chesapeake Bay Trash Trawl site!

As we enter the last month of the year, and I've written half a dozen grant reports and other summaries of the work we've done at Trash Free Maryland, it seems like a good time to share it all with you:

- We passed foam food packaging bans in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties. We trained a dozen other organizations on the issue and helped them be effective advocates, demonstrating a broad coalition of support. Together with the DC foam ban we passed in 2014, more than 2.5 million people, and 15,000 businesses, will be using more sustainable and less toxic food packaging in 2016.

- We passed a first-of-its-kind ban on plastic microbeads in face wash, toothpaste, and other personal care products. We worked with leadership in the General Assembly, industry representatives, and the Maryland Department of Environment to enact a ban that includes most synthetic microbeads, keeping these tiny plastic pellets out of the water and out of our seafood.

- We asked DC and Maryland to update their programs for keeping trash out of the Anacostia River, modifying the way they measure their progress so it makes more sense to real people and ensures that the river will one day (soon!) be truly trash-free.

- Our Trash Trawl is the largest study yet of plastic pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, collecting more than 75 samples of water, plastic pieces, and fish. Once the data analysis is complete in 2016, we can show how the plastic bag in the tree in front of your house ends up back on your dinner plate, possibly contaminated with chemicals. You can read about it in CityLab and the Baltimore Sun. Or watch NatGeo's video about it right here:



We also worked with local government officials who wanted our input on their policy proposals to reduce litter in their communities, spoke to more than 600 community members and students from elementary school through college, and reached hundreds more through online streaming and videos.

Trash Free Maryland started in 2010 and became a funded organization in 2013; this year we applied to the IRS for our nonprofit status to make it all official.* We've achieved all of that success with a single staff member and a devoted board of directors, but we can't do it alone. With your help and financial gift, we can achieve even more in 2016! Click here to make a secure donation online today. And thank you for all you do for a trash-free Maryland!

* Donations come directly to Trash Free Maryland now, and will be tax deductible retroactively once our 501c3 determination comes through. It's technical and nerdy and you should check with your tax professional for your particular situation.

We passed the foam trifecta!

Today the Prince George's County Council voted unanimously to ban polystyrene foam food containers and packing material for distribution or sale at restaurants and retailers. The ban takes effect in July 2016.

This means that next year your takeout dinner, your coffee, and your family picnic lunch will all be in paper or rigid plastic containers, many of which are compostable or recyclable. If they end up as litter, they will dissolve in the water, or be more likely to be caught in a trash trap.

Prince George's County joins Washington, DC, and Montgomery County in banning foam food packaging--this is great news for the Anacostia River watershed, as well as all of the neighborhoods and other rivers and streams in the region. It also levels the playing field for businesses and will create a powerful market force for alternative products; the demand for non-foam food packaging is about to explode!

We've been working with agencies in each jurisdiction to encourage collaboration in outreach to businesses, distributors, and retailers. We are also advocating for creation of a purchasing cooperative to help independent businesses band together and buy alternative products in bulk, driving down their unit costs and saving money. If DC, Montgomery, and Prince George's all participate, the buying power could be tremendous.

The three laws are all a little bit different. Let's break it down:

- DC bans foam food packaging at restaurants starting January 2016. It also requires that restaurants use recyclable or compostable materials for all disposable food ware (straws, lids, utensils) starting in 2017. The ban will be enforced with inspections by DDOE with fines imposed for violations.

- Montgomery County bans foam food packaging at restaurants, and the sale of foam food packaging and foam packing peanuts, starting January 2016. It also requires restaurants to use recyclable or compostable materials for disposable food ware starting in 2017. The ban will only be enforced by resident/consumer complaints.

- Prince George's County bans foam food packaging at restaurants, and the sale of foam food packaging and foam packing peanuts, starting July 2016. The ban will be enforced with inspections by DOE with fines imposed for violations.

This is truly an amazing victory for the whole region. More than 2.5 million people live in these three jurisdictions, and all three councils voted for these laws unanimously. We made a compelling case for the environmental and public health rationales, and we demonstrated strong public support. We identified businesses who could make their case, and we blunted industry opposition with strong rebuttals and a little bit of persuasion.

Foam comprises a quarter to even 40% of the volume of trash in the Anacostia River, and we've now banned it from the entire watershed. We started Trash Free Maryland to solve problems like this, and less than five years later, we've made incredible progress.

Thank you to Councilmembers Hans Riemer and Mary Lehman and former Mayor Vincent Gray for your passion, your work, and your leadership to get this done. And thank you to all the other councilmembers, legislative and agency staff, and advocates who have made this happen.

Trash Free Maryland commits to staying on top of the implementation of these laws, ensuring that businesses have the necessary support they need, and that enforcement is in place. We want to see foam and all trash pollution out of our neighborhoods and waterways, and we are well on our way to that goal!

Prince George's bag bill support reaches far beyond the traditional

Crossposted from Clean Prince George's

Many people think of the Prince George’s bag bill as an environmental bill, and it does enjoy a broad base of support from environmental groups. But the coalition supporting the bag fee is much, much broader than the environmental community. It includes town and city governments, including the Prince George's County Council, as well as business, labor, faith, youth, and cultural groups. Supporters range from the Prince George’s County Chamber of Commerce to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 400. The Maryland-National Capital Building Industry Association, representing the construction and development industry, has endorsed the bill. County Executive Rushern Baker supports the bill, as do the mayors of Forest Heights and Capitol Heights.

Reading their letters of support, it’s easy to see why there is such wide reaching enthusiasm for the bill: Cleaner, more attractive streets and streams. Taxpayer savings from reduced litter cleanup costs. Reduced landfill tipping and garbage hauling fees. A dedicated funding source to clean up our communities. These are concerns shared by all citizens, and they will benefit everyone. And with the overwhelming success of the bag fees in DC and Montgomery County, these aren’t just ideas -- we know they are proven to work.

Of course, there is also a strong coalition of environmental groups that have endorsed the bag bill. These organizations have been working for years to restore the Anacostia and Potomac rivers, and they know first-hand how much of a difference this bill will make. From Indian Creek, to the Anacostia River, the Potomac, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean -- the bag bill will improve water quality all the way down the line. The diversity of supporting environmental groups is testament to the wide ranging environmental impact of the bill: from the tiny Friends of Lower Beaverdam Creek to the nationwide Clean Water Action.

Several endorsing organizations have requested amendments to the bill, which will be incorporated to help make the transition easier for our senior and lower income residents. Those who choose to purchase disposable bags will be funding the distribution of reusable bags to those in need. Remaining funds will be dedicated to environmental cleanup projects in our neighborhoods, including public education, water quality, and litter cleanup.

A clean Prince George’s County is something we can all get behind. A more beautiful landscape, and more beautiful rivers, make our county an attractive place to live and work, inviting investment and instilling a sense of civic pride in our citizens.

Click here to see the full list of government and community organizations that support the Prince George’s bag bill.

Join the coalition! Email us if your business, government, faith, youth, environment, or other community organization would like to be added to this list.

• Alice Ferguson Foundation
• Anacostia Watershed Citizens Advisory Council
• Anacostia Watershed Restoration Partnership
• Anacostia Watershed Society
• Citizens to Conserve and Restore Indian Creek
• Clean Water Action
• Friends of Lower Beaverdam Creek
• Friends of Quincy Run Watershed
• Indian Head Highway Area Action Council
• Interfaith Partners for the Chesapeake
• Keep Prince George’s Beautiful
• Latino Civic Association
• Maryland-National Capital Building Industry Association
• Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments
• Prince George’s Chamber of Commerce
• Prince George’s Civic Association
• Sierra Club – Maryland Chapter
• Trash Free Maryland Alliance
• United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 400
• University of Maryland Student Government Association

Governmental:

• Prince George’s County Council (position statement – PDF)
• Prince George’s County Executive Rushern Baker
• City of Greenbelt
• City of College Park
• City of Mount Rainier
• Town of Bladensburg
• Mayor Jacqueline Goodall, Town of Forest Heights
• Mayor Kito James, Town of Capitol Heights
• Gary Allen, Former Mayor of Bowie

- by Bradley Kennedy, Trash Free Maryland Alliance

Update from Annapolis

Trash Free Maryland is very busy in Annapolis right now, working the General Assembly to pass three bills to reduce trash in neighborhoods and waterways across the state.

The three bills are

- disposable bag fee for Maryland. This is the same bill we've been working for three years; it would enact the same 5-cent fee in DC and Montgomery County for the whole state.
- enabling legislation to allow Prince George's County to create its own bag fee. Again, this is the same as the last two years. See www.CleanPrinceGeorges.com for info.
- a statewide bottle deposit. To learn what a bottle deposit is, see our recent article. Learn more about the campaign at Recycle for Real.

Together these bills will dramatically reduce trash in our neighborhoods, streams, and the Chesapeake Bay. All three bills have significantly stronger support in the Assembly this year than they have in the past. However, we still have a lot of work to do.

Prince George's:
A subcommittee vote could happen as soon as next week. We need to generate lots of calls and show citizen support to the delegates. Here's what you and your members can do:

1. Go to www.CleanPrinceGeorges.com to learn more and sign up for updates.
2. Go to www.mdelect.net and look up your state legislators. Call them and say you support the bag fee (both county and statewide) and you hope they do too.
3. Help us phone bank. The first event will be Monday, January 21 from 5 to 7 pm. You may be able to contribute from home. We need 5 volunteers for this.
4. Help us collect signatures from county residents. These events are every Saturday morning.
5. Meet with your legislator. I can help you set this up. You can also come to the Environmental Summit on January 29 from 4:30-6, in Annapolis. More info here.

Statewide bag fee and bottle deposit:
These bills haven't been introduced yet but we still need to show strong citizen support. Here's how you and your members can help:

1. Go to Recycle for Real to learn more about the bottle bill and sign up for updates.
2. Go to www.mdelect.net and look up your state legislators. Call them and say you support the bag fee and bottle deposit and you hope they do too.
3. Write a letter to the editor of your local paper. Describe how litter affects you. I have a tip sheet ready if you need it.
4. Meet with your legislator. I can help you set this up. You can also come to the Environmental Summit on January 29 from 4:30-6, in Annapolis. More info here.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or need any additional information. I have fact sheets and petitions ready to go and can print copies for you. I am also available to present at community meetings.

Also, please let me know if your group is interested in joining the Trash Free Maryland Alliance and/or signing on to the Clean Prince George's coalition. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Thanks for your great work improving our communities!

A Clean Prince George's Is in the Bag

Riding my bike to work last week I was struck by the huge volume of trash scattered on the banks of the Northwest Branch near the West Hyattsville Metro station. As usual, it was mostly plastic--bags, takeout containers, foam cups. A 2008 study of trash in the Anacostia River found that three-quarters of it was related to food convenience, all the stuff that we use once and throw away because we are eating on the run.

Of course this trash (generally) isn't thrown directly into the water. It gets tossed out of a car window, or dropped on the sidewalk, or even just blows out of an overflowing trash can. We know a fair amount now about why some people litter but the real answer to cleaning up our community is to motivate people to use less to begin with.

Washington, DC, and Montgomery County have had great success in reducing litter by charging 5 cents on disposable bags. Just that little nickel reminds people to get their reusable bags out of their car before shopping, or to refuse a bag for a small purchase. Businesses save a lot of money when we all use fewer "free" bags. At the same time, people who do use disposable bags are putting their money toward litter cleanup and stream restoration, creating jobs and beautifying our neighborhoods.

Prince George's County deserves the same benefits. The Maryland General Assembly will be considering PG 401-13 this winter, to give the County Council the authority to create a disposable bag reduction program. Your delegates in Annapolis need to hear from you!

Click here to find your delegates' phone numbers, and then take two minutes and call of each of them to tell them you support PG 401-13.

Crossposted from Clean Prince George's.

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.

More on the Prince George's campaign

I told you there would be more. Greater Greater Washington ran this article of mine on Friday, laying out the whole scenario. Please read, and leave a comment! If you want to put more skin in the game, and have some time on Monday, please send me an email. We are actively working on outreach to supporters and need your time and energy.

The report of the bill's death was an exaggeration

The Prince George's County bag bill (PG 402-12) got the Mark Twain treatment from the Washington Post and elsewhere yesterday. More to come, but the County Affairs committee vote yesterday has merely slowed--not stopped--the bill's progress in the General Assembly. It is a powerful reminder that supporters need to speak up, though! The plastics industry is paying for hundreds of robocalls, giving a false impression about support in the County.

Email--or even better, call--your delegates (especially Delegate Veronica Turner of District 26) today and tell them that you support a fee on disposable plastic and paper bags, and that they should too. More specifics about the campaign are posted on our County Campaign tab.

Contact your representatives!

As we wrote in November, Prince George's County is working toward a five-cent fee on plastic and paper bags, to reduce litter and save money for shoppers, businesses, and the county government. In order to bring the matter to the County Council, first the Maryland General Assembly has to give the county authority.

We have a new email action alert system to allow you to easily show your support of this proposal. When you sign, an email is sent to your delegates and senator that represent you in Annapolis. You can also include a note about why you think this legislation is a good idea.

Send an email by clicking here. We also encourage you to call. Your representatives' phone numbers are listed when you enter your zip code at the action alert, or you can search by your address here.

Support a Prince George's County Bag Bill

By Brent Bolin
Director of Advocacy, Anacostia Watershed Society
Cross-posted from www.anacostiaws.org

The Anacostia River is so severely impacted by trash that in 2007 it was declared impaired by trash under the provisions of the Clean Water Act. Only the second river in the country to be so designated, and the first multi-jurisdictional river (Maryland and DC), in 2010 a trash TMDL, or pollution diet, was issued that requires Anacostia jurisdictions to reduce the amount of trash entering the river.

At the end of 2008 AWS released a scientific study of trash in the Anacostia River. One of the key findings of this study was that 33% of the trash in the tidal river was plastic bags, while nearly 50% of the trash in tributary streams was plastic bags.

Plastic bags snagged along the Northwest Branch in Chillum, MD

The only truly sustainable way to deal with trash in our waterways is to reduce litter at the source -- AWS and volunteers can't be expected to hold trash clean-ups forever, and even trash traps only capture a portion of the trash in a waterway (and also require time and effort to maintain). For this reason AWS supports sensible policy changes that reduce trash at the source, such as DC's bag bill.

The DC bag bill is seen as a model trash reduction policy because of its simplicity and effectiveness. Assessing a 5-cent fee on disposable carryout bags, the bag bill creates an incentive for consumers to bring their own reusable bags to the store -- if you don't take the store's bags, you don't pay! As a result of this policy:

• DC has seen an estimated 80% reduction in bag use -- from 270 million bags in 2009 to 55 million bags in 2010
• Alice Ferguson Foundation reported polling data on the impact of DC's bag bill -- 78% of businesses reported either positive or no impact to their business and 75% of DC residents reported using fewer single-use plastic bags

There is no such thing as a free bag -- instead the cost of purchasing bags is passed on to the consumer via higher prices. AWS estimates the "hidden cost" of bags at $15 - $37.50 yearly for each Marylander. The bag bill is pro consumer because it exposes this hidden cost and allows the customer to avoid it. Unlike a tax, the bag fee can avoided -- if you don't want to pay the bag fee, you never have to!

Bags along roadside vegetation in Hyattsville, MD

Montgomery County has already followed DC's lead and enacted a bag program, and it is time for Prince George's County to do the same - it will help the county meet trash TMDL obligations, clean up our waterways, and generate funds for water quality propection.

How you can help
For complicated reasons involving the county's charter from the state, Prince George's County must receive authorization from the General Assembly in order to enact a bag fee program. Fortunately, the County Executive and several members of County Council are interested in the bag bill and they are seeking that authorization in the form of a local bill in the General Assembly. Prince George's County spends $2.5 million annually on litter clean-up and a bag bill would help reduce a major source of litter in our communities.

Please consider supporting the bill by attending the local hearing this Saturday, December 3, 9AM, at Queen Anne’s Theater, Prince George’s County Community College, Largo, MD. The bag fee authorization bill is number PG 402-12. Even if you aren't sure how you feel about a bag fee program, this decision should be made by the county council and not by state delegates so please urge your legislators to support home rule for Prince George's County by enacting PG 402-12.

Write your delegates and delegation chair Melony Griffith to tell them to support PG 402-12!