NAGS HEAD, N.C.
The Outer Banks is set to become the first community on the East Coast to banish those wispy plastic bags.
Gov. Bev Perdue is expected to sign the bill that bans large local retailers from using the ubiquitous bags, spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson said Tuesday. The state Senate passed the bill 44-2 on Monday.
The law would go into effect Sept. 1, right before the last big travel weekend of the summer. It applies only to the barrier islands of Dare, Currituck and Hyde counties.
The brainchild of state Sen. Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat and Senate president, the bill outlaws distribution of the bags to customers at retail chains with five or more stores in the state or at stores with 5,000 square feet of retail space or more.
Instead, the retailer can offer 100 percent recycled paper bags, or customers can bring or buy their own reusable bags. Incentives can be offered to those who bring their own bags, including a cash refund, a store coupon or credit, or a reward that's part of a customer loyalty program.
It's the incentive part of the law that bothers Angela Conner Tawes, manager of Conner's Supermarket in Buxton.
"I see that being a disaster in the lines," she said. "It's just too much confusion and headache having to explain it to everyone."
Although Conners is a small family-owned market compared with the big chain stores, it is still larger than 5,000 square feet. Thus the law mandates it cannot use thin plastic except to wrap meat, fish and produce.
Paper bags cost about three times as much as plastic, Tawes said. And paying refunds is "just a reverse tax," she said.
Despite her concerns about the increased expense, Tawes said she believes the ban has merit.
"We're certainly willing to do whatever we can to do to help," she said. "But if it's polluting here, it's polluting everywhere. I'm all for it - let's expand it."
At the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk, which uses about 2.5 million to 3 million bags a year, customers have been encouraged to recycle the bags in the store, and reusable bags are sold for 50 cents each, manager Max Dutton said.
Dutton said the ban is a "great concept" and he supports helping the environment. But he said he is concerned about the demand for and availability of the paper bags.
"I'm just trying to find the best deal I can on recycled bags," he said.
Plastic bags are banned in the California cities of San Francisco, Manhattan Beach, Fairfax, Oakland and Palo Alto, said Bryan Early, policy associate for Californians Against Waste, a grassroots environmental group.
San Francisco led the charge, banning the bags in 2007, Early said. To his knowledge, those locations have - so far - been the only ones in the nation to outright ban the bags, he said. Numerous countries, however, have banned the bags.
Philadelphia this month rejected a proposal to outlaw the bags.
Environmentalists say the bags are a major component of litter and can be harmful to wildlife, especially marine life.
Michelle Bogardus, the lead sea turtle biotechnician at Cape Hatteras National Seashore, said the bags are especially hazardous to endangered leatherback sea turtles, which consume only jellyfish.
"They actually think they are jellyfish, so they are intentionally eating it, not knowing it's a plastic bag," she said.
The bags can lodge in the digestive tract of the animals, she said, or twist their intestines.
But Rudy Underwood, director of governmental affairs for the American Chemistry Council, said plastic bags use less energy and less water and create less air emissions than recycled paper, and they are not as bulky when they're thrown away. Plus, he said, plastic bags are a U.S. product.
Underwood also said he has never seen any documentation proving that the plastic bags are harmful to wildlife. "It's an Internet myth," he said.
Catherine Kozak, (252) 441-1711, cate.kozak@pilotonline.com
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Plastic Bags
Someone really needs to consider the facts a little more:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3508263.ece and
http://www.iowaenvironmentallawupdate.com/2009/07/articles/going-green/sure-plastic-bags-are-better-but-is-that-the-real-question/
Paper....plastic...cant we
Paper....plastic...cant we all just get along?
ANOTHER USELESS PIECE OF LEGISLATION
Here we go with another product of a mindless bureaucrat with too much time on his hands. Over the long run, there is no proof whatsoever that plastic bags pollute more than paper ones when you include the manufacturing process - and they can be recycled just like paper. As a matter of fact, they came into use because they produce LESS waste. Just another boondoggle...
To Laura Eichbaum
Your obvious distaste for Mark has worn out YOUR welcome. You are certainly entitled to your opinion on his politics. However, your comment regarding the fire at his restaurant being "suspicious" is completely out of line. If you have some information that suggest that the fire was anything other than an accident, bring it forward. No one else from the lay person to the experts have found any evidence to support your comment. Your hate for the Senator and your subsequent statements regarding him, his personal life and business, is consistant with those who only offer negativity, sitting on the sidelines critizing rather than working to change what they beleive to be an injustice. This is a shot in the dark, but could you possibly be a Republican? As for you not patronizing the Lone Cedar, all the better. Your presence would only detract from a fine dining experience, where the the food and service are great and the prices are comparable.
Please don't let the door hit you on the way out. Scott Sawyer
where will it end?
You think the socialist/environmentalists will stop when they are done with plastic bags? Where they done when they successfully made the styrofoam and water bottle industries politically incorrect? They will never stop. Get ready to say goodbye to garbage liners and zip-lock baggies. Then they'll move to those pesky aluminum cans we get our green beans and mexi-corn in. Plastic milk cartons? They're targeted for 2011 right after you say bye-bye to soda-cans and rubber-soled sneakers.
Wake up people! The last thing this is about is the environment. This is all about control, regulation, and always having a cause to fight for.
Paper or plastic?
I am surprised this many comments were posted before someone turned it into a partisan political attack, but not surprised that the attacker had no actual input for the discussion.
Government conspiracy
Government conspiracy theorists amuse me.
Easy Solution
It would be easy to simply carry our own bags (many available for purchase at Navy commissaries and other stores such as Farm Fresh) and after putting groceries away, return bag to car (lest like me, you tend toward forgetfulness) and reuse. It really is stupid of us to continue to use resources like paper and plastic bags that clog animals's throats and our own waterways and landfills. It takes that extra shove to get us started though and perhaps this proposition will be just that.
Comment
Reusable bags are great! Now if I can just start remembering to put them in my car when I visit the grocery store....
plastic bags
Stores in Germany do not use plastic bags at all. Some stores don't even have bags; people have reusable bags. There are no ugly plastic bags blowing around on the streets and roadways. But, then, they recycle EVERYTHING. Trash is separated into metal, paper, plastic and garbage, its mandatory. This is one reason why Germany is "clean and green".
"There is a misconception
"There is a misconception here."
This is inaccurate. In fact, it totaly false and show the author of the quote below is not familiar w/ the highly toxic nature of producing plastics. Nor does the author mention that the source of paper bags(wood) is a renewable resource while petro based platic bags is not.
As a test, take a paper bag and bury it in your yard folks. Come back in a year and dig in the spot where you buried it. Let us know what you find. It will still be there(maybe) but it will be degraded. The plastic will not. Or use it as weed matting in your flower beds and let us know how long it lasts.
Silly
Test
Several years ago I tried growing plants in plastic grocery bags full of potting soil. Sorry to disappoint you but the plastic bags didn't make it through one season before they started degrading and falling apart.
Last week I was walking through a neighborhood and guess what was littering the road. A reusable grocery bag. Slobs will be slobs, no matter which type of bag they carry their groceries home in.
I am actually very happy
I am actually very happy about this. Every weekend as I walk through False Cape Park- which is actually in VA, I pick up so much trash, mostly consisting of plastic bags.
There is a misconception
There is a misconception here. Plastic bags are really better for the environment than paper bags. Contrary to popular belief, paper bags never degrade when covered by a foot of dirt. One paper bag takes up more room in a landfill than one plastic bag. Paper bags are costly to produce (cutting down trees to produce paper pulp) and more pollution (ever smelled a paper mill and saw the runoff into the river???). Given a choice between paper or plastic… its plastic eveytime.
Apparently Mr. Rudy
Apparently Mr. Rudy Underwood does not actually surf the internet he cites. If he did he could easily view large swaths of the bags floating in the ocaen.
Laura, thanks for opening up the table. The place get's packed. You will be missed.
On the cockroach concerns, home w/o a food source need not worry about this. If there is no food made accessible to the roaches they will not frequent your home. If you notice, all fast food joints use paper in lieu of plastic and their product is...are you ready...FOOD. Clean your house to get rid of roaches, not litter the sea w/ plastic.
Recycle plastic
Wonder why the idea of recycling the plastic was not mentioned??? It's a pain to take them back to a store even though most large stores now have a place to deposit them. Seems the curb side recycle pickup could include the plastic as they do paper.
Obviously I'm missing something ???????
recycling plastic bags
For some reasson, it is much too expensive to recycle plastic bags. Also, they clog up the sorting machinery.
Virginia Beach needs to do the same!
With all the coastline, many chances for plastic bags to get into the waterways and be ingested by turtles and dolphins.
I shopped at a market in Central VA and they gave you a 5 cent credit on your order for each bag you brought with you. Not a big deal but it did remind you to bring your own!
I'd like to see these banned in Va....
I've always despised these plastic bags. People toss them everywhere and they NEVER disappear. They get blown up into trees, into lakes, all along highways, neighborhoods -- they're horrible. But then the people who throw them out instead of disposing of them properly are horrible too.
On the flip side, the paper bags grocery stores have can be a detriment to one's household. They can harbor ROACHES!!!! Ack!!!
plastic bags
I like the plastic bags because there easier to handle and make great garbage can liners, but if you ever looked at a empty field next to a walmart in the spring time it is full of bags, ditches are full. fence lines are full of bags.