Plastic bags: a convenience or a curse?

Who hasn’t left a store carrying a purchase dangling in a plastic bag? Most Americans have. But to many people, plastic bags are a growing scourge.

In 2011, the one-day Alice Ferguson Potomac River cleanup collected 27,624 plastic bags at 613 sites in D.C. and four states, including Virginia. Only five percent of the 100
billion plastic bags used annually in the U.S. is recycled. They take hundreds of years to degrade.

Some bags get snagged in trees and bushes, and some find their way into storm drains. These usually end up in wetlands like Dyke Marsh and streams like Little Hunting Creek, where animals can mistake them for food. In the ocean, turtles may think plastic bags are jelly fish snacks. Whales may mistake them for squid. In animals, a bag can suffocate, choke, block digestion and cause death. Plastic bag remnants have been found in the stomachs of birds, whales, dolphins, bottom fish and manatees in necropsies.  

Many people see plastic bags in the environment as unsightly pollution. “The pollution from plastic bags in the streams and waterways is the fourth most prevalent form of pollution behind cigarettes, food wrappers and plastic beverage bottles,” then Delegate and now Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-30) said in introducing a bill in 2010 to put a nickel tax on single-use shopping bags.

In the current General Assembly, Del. Joe Morrissey (D-74) has introduced H.B. 124, a bill to impose a 20-cent tax on plastic bags used in grocery, convenience and drug stores. Durable, reusable plastic bags and bags used for ice cream, meat, fish, poultry, leftover restaurant food, newspapers, dry cleaning and prescription drugs would be exempt. Retailers could retain five cents of the 20-cent tax or seven cents if the retailer has a customer bag credit program.

“What we're trying to do is change people's habits, get them to use re-usable, and not using plastics,” Where do the rest of those plastics go? Landfills, rivers, crop land,” Morrissey explained.

Delegate Scott Surovell (D-44), a cosponsor of the Morrissey bill, says, "After attending multiple creek cleanups in my district, it is clear that there is a massive litter problem in the Route 1 corridor that must be addressed. I have seen creeks so full of trash than you could walk across the accumulated trash. If someone doesn't like the fee, they can not take a bag." (Editor's Note: Surovell is Glenda Booth's son).

A House of Delegates’ committee killed the Morrissey bill for now in January. Previous efforts in the state legislature failed in 2009, 2010 and 2011. 

U.S. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) has offered the Trash Reduction Act, a bill to require retailers nationwide to pay five cents on disposable plastic and paper consumer bags. No action has been taken on the bill.

A Regional Trend?

Last year, after Washington, D.C.’s city council imposed a five-cent tax on retail plastic bags, the number dropped from 22.5 million a month to three million. Montgomery County’s five-cent charge on paper and plastic carryout bags went into effect on Jan. 1, an ordinance which officials say was enacted to reduce disposable bags and encourage shoppers to bring reusable bags.

Safeway Recycles

Area Safeway groceries like the stores at Belle View and Hollin Hall collect plastic bags for recycling into weather-resistant deck material, according to Craig Muckle, the store’s eastern division manager of public and government affairs. “We typically would oppose a bill that places a priority on one type of bag based on its composition,” he said. “If it  leads people toward recyclable bags, we tend to not have a problem.” Safeway also sells reusable bags,  he added.