Maryland's Montgomery County Passes Bag Fee

Following in the footsteps of DC's successful bag fee, the Montgomery County Council has passed a 5 cent fee on disposable bags. The fee applies to both paper and plastic bags at nearly all retail establishments.

The fee is a win-win:

• If consumers keep using disposable bags, the county will now have an additional $1 million to help fund cleanups of streams & rivers
• If consumers switch their habits to reusable bags, the county will have dramatically reduced its need to clean up streams & rivers

The Virginia General Assembly has not only refused to pass a disposable bag fee, it's refused to even let communities like Arlington impose their own. So we don't get the funding to clean up waterways and we don't give consumers a nudge to change their habits - a lose-lose.

Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) has also introduced a national bag fee with proceeds going to fund conservation programs, but House Republicans seem way too busy trying to protect Big Oil subsidies to act on a bag fee.

Learn more about why a bag fee makes economic & environmental sense at TrashFreeVirginia.org.

WTOP Believes in the Plastic Bag Fairy

WTOP apparently thinks plastic bags are created for free by magic fairies and delivered fresh each morning to the steps of your local grocery store.

"It'll soon cost you more to go to the grocery store." That's how an anchor began a story this week on a proposal to put a fee on plastic bags in Maryland's Montgomery County.

Plastic bags cost retailers $4 billion a year, a cost they pass along to us in the form of higher prices. As DC's experience shows, a small plastic bag fee can dramatically increase reusable bag usage. That cuts overhead for the store, prices for consumers, and taxes for all of us as communities spend less money picking up plastic bag litter.

Learn more at TrashFreeMaryland.org and TrashFreeVirginia.org.

Nick Naylor's New Message: Plastic Bags Aren't So Bad!

What does it say about the plastic bag industry that they're now turning to the guy who inspired the oblivious-to-his-own-evil Nick Naylor in Thank You For Smoking?

Yes, that's who's left to defend plastic bags these days - the lobbying firm of Rick Berman, who's made millions off trying to convince you that cigarettes, chemicals, fast food & more are maybe not so bad for you.

The Arlington Sun Gazette ran a letter to the editor last week from one of Berman's minions basically claiming if you touch a reusable bag, you'll be dead before you even hit the ground. Real subtle, those corporate lobbyists are. (The Sun Gazette doesn't mention the letter writer is a paid shill for corporate interests, merely listing the misleadingly-innocuous title of the lobbying firm, because the Sun Gazette's stated editorial mission is making advertisers happy, not giving you the straight story.)

Of course, what they don't tell you is that plastic bags are made from oil, require additional toxic chemicals to produce, kill hundreds of thousands of marine animals every year & never biodegrade (check out all the gory details).

The simple truth is that breaking our bad habit of plastic bag use is good for everyone except the plastic bag industry. And really, if plastic bags are so great & indispensable, why did a measly 5 cent fee slash DC plastic bag use 80%?

Tell your Virginia General Assembly member you want a trash-free Virginia.

Farmers Get Behind Plastic Bag Ban or Fee

The Virginian-Pilot today editorializes in support of a statewide plastic bag ban or fee:

Drive past a farm field in or near Hampton Roads these days, and you're likely to see a bumper crop of plastic shopping bags. The cotton, corn and soy are gone, but the seeds of our throwaway culture yield an unending harvest. [...]

The Virginia Farm Bureau Federation, whose members are weary of damage to machinery and harm to livestock, is already on board.

As the Farm Bureau can attest, there's more than aesthetics - or mowing time - at stake here. In addition to helping livestock and harvests, a ban would benefit wildlife and marine life, particularly sea turtles, that eat or become entangled in the plastic.

So to recap, farmers will benefit. Our environment will benefit. Retail stores will benefit by spending less money on giving away bags & under Del. Adam Ebbin's plan, retaining 1 or 2 cents of the fee on each bag, depending whether they offer customers a carryout bag credit program for reusable bags. Virginia's budget will benefit not just from the revenue of the fee, but from saving money on picking up discarded bags (Maryland’s Department of Transportation spends $29 per bag of litter collected along the state’s highways & counties spend millions more).

Why not do it? Accusations of nanny statism? I mean, isn't the current state of affairs the definition of nannyism? If you carelessly discard a plastic bag, we all have to pay higher taxes to fund a worker to go pick it up. Isn't a bag fee a way to encourage personal responsibility?

Big Govt. in Richmond Keeping Arlington Dirtier Than It Should Be

Anyone who's taken part in a stream or park cleanup with Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment knows what a pervasive problem plastic bags are. They get tangled up in the branches of bushes & trees or among the rocks & sticks in a stream bed and can stay there for months or years until someone comes to remove them, one by one. If the bag washes out to the Potomac River, it ends up in the open ocean, degrading into smaller & smaller pieces of plastic that work their way into the food chain.

A small incentive to use reusable bags could go a long way towards keeping Arlington cleaner AND bring in some much-needed revenue. So what's the holdup? Under Virginia's antiquated Dillon Rule system, Arlington has to ask Virginia's General Assembly for permission first:

County Board members will again next year ask the General Assembly for permission to either ban single-use plastic bags at retail outlets, like supermarkets and convenience stores, or to be given the authority to tax them.

You'd think Democrats & Republicans would be able to come together on giving communities a greater degree of home rule -- what does a Republican from Botetourt County care if Arlington wants to get rid of plastic bags?

But this is less an issue of politics than it is of power. General Assembly members like being able to tell communities what they can & can't do. After all, why would they want to give up their ability to pass along unfunded mandates to communities? They can take credit for making something happen without having to take the blame of raising taxes to pay for it. Sounds like a win-win! For 140 politicians in Richmond, anyway.

CVS Launches New Reusable Bag Incentive

As DC prepares to implement its 5 cent disposable bag fee, CVS is offering an incentive that stretches across the Potomac:

CVS is also distributing “Green Bag Tag” cards that offer discounts to reusable bag customers. Gordon Howard, CVS area vice president, said in the city’s release that the company has “a long history of rewarding our customers with incentives that are both convenient and beneficial to their well-being. The District of Columbia’s initiative to clean up the Anacostia ties in with our ongoing green efforts, such as the Green Bag Tag program.”

Seems like a vastly better incentive than the usual 5 cents off. My friend Virginia Robinson reports, "My local CVS (Clarendon) tells me that there has been so much demand for them that they can't keep them in stock."

Photo via IHeartCVS.com

The Green Miles vs. Virginia ABC

Every time I go to a Virginia ABC store to buy liquor, they insist on giving me a plastic bag. It's against Virginia law, they tell me, to have a bottle of alcohol in public that's not covered.

This offends me not just as an environmentalist, but as a non-Puritan. So I end up doing an odd little dance with the cashier every time I go.

"My car is parked right there," I say, turning and pointing to my car visible through the glass door not 30 feet from the cash register. "I'll take my chances on not getting arrested on the five feet of sidewalk between the door and my car."

"But I have to put it in a bag," the clerk insists with a yes-it's-stupid-but-I'll-get-in-trouble-if-I-don't look.

So I get a look of flinty Chicago toughness in my eye and tell the cashier, "Then you tell them coppers there ain't a jail been built yet that can hold The Green Miles." And we both laugh as I pull the bottle out of the plastic bag and carry it out to my car.

Photo via Yelp's Avenger R.

The Lazy Man's Case for a Plastic Bag Ban

Over at Deadspin, Drew Magary has a post up titled The Bizarre World Of American Grocery Bagging. Basically, he admits he won't use reusable bags unless forced to, but that once it happens, he won't really care because he's fully aware of how lazy he is.

I won't edit out the curse words because A) I don't think many small children are reading my thoughts about nuclear power and B) it's silly to edit out the curse words when we all know what they are anyway:

Every time I hit the store, my wife reminds me to bring cloth bags with me. These are the bags you buy for a buck each and reuse so you don't have to use plastic bags and kill all the penguins in Antarctica, or something like that. I never remember to bring these things, and subconsciously, it's because I don't really want to. I know plastic bags will kill the world for future generations. But I don't REALLY give a shit. Fuck ‘em. I won't be around. Sink or swim, children.

If they really don't want you to use plastic bags in the grocery store, they should get rid of them. Or they should charge you for them, like Bloomberg wanted to do in New York. Fucking fascist.

I'm the kind of person who never changes unless forced to.

Magary closes with, "And that's why this planet is utterly fucking doomed."

What do you say, Virginia General Assembly? Will you ban plastic bags to save Drew's children from their lazy dad?

UPDATE 8/7: The Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot editorializes for a ban today from the non-lazy person's perspective.

BYOBag

From Bill Maher's Earth Day entry at HuffingtonPost.com:

[S]upermarket clerks must stop putting the big bottle of detergent with a handle on it in a plastic bag. I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, but you see that handle you just lifted the detergent with? I can use that same handle to carry the detergent to my car. And stop putting my liquor in a smaller paper sack before you put it in the big paper sack with my other stuff. What, are you afraid my groceries will think less of me if they see I've been drinking? Trust me, the broccoli doesn't care, and the condoms already know.

And it's with that completely inappropriate introduction that I give you the brand new Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment reusable bag!

To celebrate, ACE is having a kickoff party:

BYOBag Kickoff Ceremony
Sunday, May 18, 1 to 4 p.m.
Market Commons, 2800 Clarendon Blvd., Arlington

• Join us we kickoff our campaign to promote the use of reusable bags and the many problems with plastics in our environment. This (rescheduled) event will be part of the Market Commons Spring Fling. The student winners of our BYOBag poster contest will also be recognized.
  
• We'll have free ACE Living Green BYOBags for the first 50 visitors. The spring fling will also include music and kids' activities.
• We need volunteers for our table. Contact us at volunteer@arlingtonenvironment.org or 703-228-6427.

To learn more about why reusable bags are so much better for the environment than either paper or plastic bags, check out this post from The Green Miles archive.

DC Media Going Green

UPDATE: Grist has an interview with Ikea's sustainability director.

UPDATE #2: The Washington Post reports on Ikea's plastic bag fee.

One side effect of global warming's mainstream acceptance is that more businesses are realizing there's money to be made by going green.

A DC radio station is following the trend, with WARW re-branding itself as "94.7 The Globe." Their website lists their green principles, but has no details on either what the station is doing or what listeners can do to help the environment. They're hyping the Bonnaroo music festival as a green event, but so far, the concert's website has exactly as many details as 94.7's (zero).

Fortunately, Raw Fisher is on the case. Marc reports the station put out a statement on what it will be doing on the green front, including "Using renewable energy to supply power to the station's 50,000 watt signal and using hybrid station vehicles. ... Station appearances will ... provide listeners with information on environmental leadership and energy conservation; WARW will also host events encouraging recycling, tree planting and use of green products."

I'm going to hold back judgement on The Globe until I see how they put their principles into action. Will they host a local public affairs show dedicated to environmental issues? Will they donate money and airtime to local environmental organizations? Will they print promotional items on recycled material? The devil, as always, is in the details.

Over at NBC4, Wendy Rieger is making a much more personal statement about the environment. She's been presenting a "Going Green" series of reports since 2005. She's now expanded that to include a blog, "The Green Room." It's fantastic to see such a well-known news anchor lending her name and expertise to the cause of environmentalism.

My favorite tidbit from The Green Room so far comes from Wendy's most recent trip to Ireland:

You don't automatically get a bag for your groceries in the stores here; you either bring your own or have to buy a bag at 2-cents each. I've often carried my roll of paper towels and box of tea home under my arm not because I didn't want to buy a bag, but the question "do you need a bag" gives one pause long enough to realize that bagging such paltry items just seemed wrong. There is clearly much more Irish eco-info to impart but I'm afraid you'll grow weary and in desperation start begging me to elaborate on the Shannon Airport breakfast bar.

Very good point. Here in the U.S., the question isn't even asked -- you get a bag whether you want it or not. I hate it when I run to CVS to grab a greeting card and the cashier sticks it in a bag. Is it really that unwieldy that I need something to carry it in? Bigger grocery stores allow you to return your bags, but why use so many of them in the first place?

According to fellow blogger the Green Wombat, Ikea just announced it will start charging for plastic bags. Do you think we should consider lobbying more stores to start charging for bags here in the U.S.?

The Green Room blog doesn't allow comments, but you can email Wendy with feedback and story ideas!