Ban on plastic bags goes into effect on Outer Banks

Effective today, the nation's first state-mandated ban on plastic shopping bags goes into effect on the Outer Banks. Even customers of small souvenir stores and bait-and-tackle shops will be prohibited from taking their goods home in plastic.

The ban builds on another law, passed last year, that made it illegal for large retailers on North Carolina's barrier islands to use the bags. Customers of stores such as Walmart and Food Lion have been shopping on the Outer Banks without single-use plastic bags since September 2009.

Now all businesses in coastal Currituck, Dare and Hyde counties are subject to the provisions. Businesses on Roanoke Island are exempt.

The ban, proposed by state Senate leader Marc Basnight, aims to promote a new shopping culture on the Outer Banks, where the delicate coastal ecosystem is particularly vulnerable to excessive trash.

Basnight spokesman Schorr Johnson said the Dare County Democrat conceived the idea with two goals in mind: protecting the environment and helping preserve the thriving tourism industry.

"A littered-up Outer Banks is not what will continue to attract visitors from around the country," Johnson said.

Proposals to ban single-use plastic bags have been increasingly controversial, pitting environmentalists against defenders of personal choice. In some areas, such as Hampton Roads, efforts to increase the recycling of plastic bags have found traction where bans did not.

Environmentalists argue that the bags pose a hazard to sea turtles. Leatherback turtles can mistake plastic bags floating in the ocean for their main food source, jellyfish. Green turtles ingest bags trapped in sea grass, said Christina Trapani with the Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response Team.

Turtles aren't the only marine animals affected, Trapani said. The abundance of plastic in the ocean puts every animal that eats plankton at risk, she said.

"It never goes away," Trapani said. "It just gets smaller and smaller."

On the other end of the spectrum is the American Chemistry Council, which lobbies on behalf of the plastic industry. The ACC fiercely opposed the Outer Banks bag ban when it was first proposed last year.

"Bans are not the right approach," ACC spokesman Keith Christman said. "All that does is force people back to paper."

Paper bags, Christman said, cost significantly more to produce than plastic bags. He said it takes seven times as many trucks to move the same number of paper bags as plastic ones, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead of bans or taxes, Christman said, the industry encourages efforts to recycle plastic bags. Bans threaten the survival of infrastructure already in place for plastic recycling, he said.

On the front lines are people such as Frisco business owner Bryan Perry, who said he believes the problem really lies with how some people choose to dispose of garbage.

"It's not that little plastic bag that's causing the problem," said Perry, who owns Frisco Rod and Gun on Hatteras Island. "It's the person who's letting it blow out the back of his truck."

In the grocery store, Perry already offers paper bags to customers as opposed to plastic ones. To comply with the new law, those bags must be made of at least 40 percent recycled material.

"Just finding them has been a burden," Perry said.

That challenge was the catalyst for the creation of a local coalition formed to purchase recycled paper bags in bulk, rather than have each small business pay higher prices for a small supply.

The effort is being coordinated by local environmental group BlueGreen Outer Banks. Group founder Willo Kelly said plans are under way to host a registration event for interested retailers sometime around Earth Day.

Meanwhile, in Hampton Roads, a plastic-bag recycling project created a year ago in Isle of Wight County will soon be expanded statewide. Since the launch, nearly a million plastic bags have been collected and sold back to manufacturers, said Margaret Ballard, vice president of advocacy for the local merchants association, Retail Alliance.

Isle of Wight County had initially considered a bag ban but agreed to the recycling project - which designates bag-drop sites where they are then baled and sold for the production of other materials.

Retail Alliance opposes bag bans as a practical solution to reducing litter, Ballard said.

"There's a customer-relations issue for us as well as an operational issue," she said. "Paper is, like, six times more expensive than plastic."

Paper bags remain an option for Outer Banks retailers under certain conditions. In addition to offering recycled paper bags, stores also must offer a refund to customers who shop with their own reusable bags for the cost of the paper bags saved.

"The point of the legislation was never to switch from plastic to paper. I can't emphasize this enough," Johnson said. "The hope is that even small businesses will find a way to encourage and promote the reusable bags."

The law does allow businesses to continue using plastic bags to wrap fresh fish, meat or produce. Newly affected businesses that purchased plastic bags before the law passed also are allowed to continue using those bags until their supply runs out, but no later than May 1.

California legislators recently rejected what would have been the first statewide ban in the country after a debate over environmental versus economic impacts. Similar measures also have been defeated in Hawaii, Massachusetts, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Plastic bag bans have been more successful on the local level. Several California cities, including San Francisco, have adopted the bans in recent years. The District of Columbia implemented a bag tax in 2009.

In April, Basnight sent a letter to about 600 Outer Banks businesses asking for feedback on the proposal to expand the law. There was little. Many Outer Banks business owners phased out plastic bags on their own or never used them.

At the Lee Robinson General Store in Hatteras Village, owners Virgil and Belinda Willis haven't used plastic bags in the 37 years they've owned the shop, and many customers bring reusable bags.

"I've never been real crazy about" plastic bags, Belinda Willis said. "If you really look, the whole world's full of them."

Virgil Willis, however, said he's not particularly thrilled with the idea of the government making choices for people.

"For the most part, people do what's right," he said. "They don't always need to be regulated."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Erin James, (252) 441-1711, erin.james@pilotonline.com