FALL RIVER – City officials will decide Tuesday whether they want to push for a local ban on plastic bags or throw their support behind an ongoing statewide initiative to ban plastic bags and similar materials across Massachusetts.
The local resolution, submitted by Councilor Steven Camara, would ban so-called “T-shirt bags” throughout the city. The proposal was submitted to the council for review last year, but hadn’t appeared back on an agenda until next week’s Committee on Health and Environmental Affairs meeting was announced.
Camara said Friday that part of the delay had to do with seeing whether the city would end its pay-as-you-throw “purple bags” trash program. Now that the Legislature seems to be seriously considering an outright ban across the state, Camara said he’s now questioning the value of passing a local ban.
“One disadvantage (of a local ban) is it wouldn’t address totally the use of plastic bags. Many people go across the river to shop there,” he said. “North End constituents might shop at Stop & Shop and then bring those bags back across the river into Fall River.”
Coincidentally, as city councilors debate the merits of banning plastic bags next Tuesday, so will members of the state Legislature. A public hearing before the Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources, and Agriculture will be held on April 2 to discuss a bill (H 771) that would not only ban plastic bags, but also straws and Styrofoam. If passed, proponents of the bill say it would expand the state’s bottle redemption laws to cover more beverages and help shift recycling costs from taxpayers and onto waste producers and consumers.
“My intent is to put some emphasis to get that on the state level. It’s more affect if you’re going to ban plastic bags in just Fall River,” said Camara. “I’ve been told by our legislators that this will probably be passed this year.”
Camara, whose family ran the Robeson IGA grocery store from the 1950s to the 1980s, said he does anticipate that there will be some local opposition to banning plastic bags, though he said he believes people will be willing to embrace a more sustainable use. He said his family’s store has only used paper bags and that he remembers many customers bringing in bags of their own to carry their purchases home.
“Even back then people were very oriented not to using plastic bags,” he said. “I recognize there would be resistance and I also know from my research in other communities that those most adversely affected are lower income people who go to the market and walk home carrying their groceries in those plastic bags. … There needs to be some sensitivity to implementing this kind of thing.”
As of this month, 94 Massachusetts cities and towns have started regulating single-use plastic shopping bags in some capacities, according to the Sierra Club’s Massachusetts chapter. The city of Boston’s plastic bag ban officially went into effect in December.
The Massachusetts Sierra Club estimates that state residents use more than 2 billion plastic bags per year, leading to “pervasive” littering and harm to animals like sea turtles. In just 2011 alone, the anti-littering volunteer group Cleansweep collected nearly three tons of plastic bags that had been improperly discarded in Massachusetts.