No Room for Plastic Bags
by Karl Grossman

 

It began in Ireland, has spread to other nations around the world, and it could be coming to this area: a charge on takeaway plastic bags.

In 2002, Ireland enacted a 15 cent charge on each plastic takeaway bag given out by a store. That quickly resulted in a 90 percent reduction in their use in Ireland.

And a lot of plastic bags were being distributed in Ireland: 1.2 billion a year in a nation of four million. Folks in Ireland are now overwhelmingly using reusable totes.

Now Suffolk County Legislator Vivian Viloria-Fisher of East Setauket has introduced a bill that even goes further—it would set a nickel “surcharge” for both plastic and paper “disposable bags” distributed at retail stores in Suffolk.

She drafted her bill to impose a charge on both plastic and paper bags because last year, when she introduced a bill to flatly ban carry-out bags, food and plastics industry representatives said paper bags “also have significant environmental impact” in terms of the huge number of trees cut down to produce them. The industry argument “convinced me,” says Ms. Viloria-Fisher, that both plastic and paper shopping bags are environmentally problematic. She views reusable totes as the preferred alternative.

Indeed, destruction of forests to produce paper—notably for one-time use—is not green. Not just the destruction of rainforests but also of northern forests has contributed to an increase in global warming.

Meanwhile, plastic bags are a huge problem all over the world. A report identifying them as a major source of pollution globally was issued in June by the United Nations Environmental Programme. The program’s executive director, Achim Steiner, said that “single-use plastic bags…should be banned or phased out rapidly everywhere…There’s simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere,” he said.

In the U.S., 100 billion plastic takeaway bags are distributed annually, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Virtually all of them, it says, end up in landfills—taking near forever to decompose—or as litter, or get into waterways.

With the charge on plastic take-away bags, “overnight” the situation changed in Ireland, Sag Harbor physical therapist Sinead FitzGibbon, in her Irish brogue, was telling me recently (as she treated a painful hip). What had been a “catastrophe” of plastic bags littering the lovely Irish landscape immediately passed. She suggested I contact her sister, Niamh, recently elected to the Town Council of New Ross County Wexford (from where the Kennedy family hails).

By email, Councillor (the Irish spelling) FitzGibbon wrote: “It’s true. We had a terrible problem with plastic bags…and it was pretty much solved in one fell swoop.”

A Green Party member, she added: “It’s great to think that a good idea can spread like this.”
At a recent public hearing on Ms. Viloria-Fisher’s proposed Suffolk County measure, authored by Legislator Vivian Viloria-Fisher, Maureen Dolan Murphy, executive program manager of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, cited the Irish success story and said “we have an obligation to reduce plastic in the environment.”

Dr. Larry Swanson, associate dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences of Stony Brook University and chairman of the Suffolk County Council on Environmental Quality, declared that the “proliferation of plastics by retail businesses has grown beyond anybody’s expectations.” He spoke of their being “hazardous to marine life…a big expense to clean up…and we have to be concerned about how we squander the world’s oil supply” in making them.

Bob DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End, testified that Suffolk County has “led the way on many environmental efforts before” and should do it again on this measure.

MaryAnn Johnston of the Affiliated Brookhaven Civic Organization asked: “Why put weekly groceries in a bag that will last forever?”

Meanwhile, Bonny Betancourt of the American Chemical Council—representing plastic bag manufacturers—said “we feel plastic bags have a place in the marketplace.”

In neighboring Connecticut, officials are also considering a nickel charge on both plastic and paper takeaway bags.

If it could be done in Ireland and solve a huge problem, so nicely, surely this is a responsible move for Suffolk County, Connecticut—indeed for all the U.S.

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, hosts the nationally-aired television program Enviro Close-Up (www.envirovideo.com) and is chief investigative reporter for WVVH-TV on Long Island.