The years-long debate in Baltimore over whether to tax or ban disposable plastic bags to reduce waste and litter appears headed for resolution - with half a ban, if that.
A council committee revamped the bag ban it had been considering for two years to give supermarkets, convenience stores and restaurants a choice: use only paper bags at checkout or encourage customers to reduce or recycle the plastic ones. The measure now goes to the full 14-member council on Monday, March 22.
The original ban proposal got watered down to win over merchants and plastic bag manufacturers, who have been sparring with city and state lawmakers around the country to keep their products from being outlawed or taxed. The new council measure lets Baltimore food sellers keep using flimsy plastic bags at checkout counters if they enroll in a city "plastic bag reduction program." The program requires them to tout recycling and offer to sell customers sturdy reusable shopping bags.
That's exactly what a lot of large supermarket and chain retailers already are doing. And recycling of plastic bags and film (such as dry cleaner bags) has increased by 28 percent nationwide since 2005, according to a new report released by the American Chemistry Council, which represents plastic bag makers. A council exec calls plastic "a valuable resource - too valuable to waste." The industry has launched a campaign to boost the recycling rate to 40 percent in the next five years.
Though the industry proclaims bag recycling is at an all-time high and rising, its own release indicates how far it has to go. The same report cites the Environmental Protection Agency's estimate that just 13 percent of the bags and film dispensed nationally gets recycled.
Council members who originally backed a bag ban or fee (aka tax) say they're willing to try this softer approach if it means they can get something on the books, finally after years of study and debate. And they're hopeful it will lead to at least some decline in plastic bag use, which they believe should reduce opportunities for the flimsy sacks to wind up festooning trees or floating in the Inner Harbor.
Many "mom and pop" stores on Baltimore's street corners, it's suggested, may find the bag reduction program too big a hassle, since it requires merchants to post signs and offer reusable bags for sale at their checkout counters. Participating store owners also have to file semi-annual reports to City Hall on how many plastic and paper bags they've bought, sold and recycled. And there's the matter of the fee - merchants can enroll in the reduction program free of charge until Sept. 1, after which it'll cost $500.
So that's where the partial ban comes in: Those who don't get with the program will have to switch to using paper bags only - or risk being cited and fined $250 and up if caught still using plastic.
Proponents of the half-ban say they'll give it a couple years to show results. If it doesn't, they say they'll dust off their discarded bids for an outright ban or for raising customers' consciousness by charging a fee for every disposable bag they ask for at the checkout counter. Shoppers in the District of Columbia have slashed their demand for carryout bags by half since the city started requiring food sellers to charge a nickel for each on Jan. 1.
Timing is everything, it seems. Interestingly, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had recently signaled her willingness to consider a similarly low bag fee here, as long as there was some exemption for the city's poorest residents. The DC experience suggests it doesn't take much of a fee to make consumers ask themselves if they really need a carryout bag. And it might have raised upwards of $1 million for a city that's struggling with a huge budget deficit.
But Rawlings-Blake had come out last year, as council president, against the council bill that would have charged customers 25 cents per bag. By the time she'd indicated a softening of her position, the fee bill, pushed by Councilman Bill Henry, had been essentially shelved in favor of working out something with the merchants and bag industry.
Baltimore's bag half-ban could still get upstaged by statewide legislation, of course. Legislators from the Washington suburbs, joined by a few from Baltimore, are pushing a DC-like fee bill in Annapolis. But it's a long shot at best. As reported last week by WYPR's Joel McCord, the bag industry and merchants were joined in opposition to it by the state Department of the Environment, with a spokeswoman the agency lacks the resources to do the public education campaign called for in the bill.