plastic bags are like an invasive species: They are everywhere and have incorporated themselves so much into our ecosystem that they might as well be alive.
Plastic bags at times behave like tumbleweed and at others can be found blooming on trees as large white or tan flowers. Mistaken for jellyfish, millions of marine animals consume plastic bags and die as they become tangled in their intestines.
Plastic bags are also blessed with both a long lifespan (it takes 300 to 1,000 years for one to degrade), and a high birthrate (in Massachusetts three million are used each day).
Currently the Massachusetts Legislature is considering a bill that would reduce the number (an estimated 1.4 billion) of plastic bags Massachusetts uses each year. House Bill 1990, sponsored by Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead, would ban all non-compostable plastic bags in retail stores of 4,000 square feet or more.
Small bodegas and mom-and-pop stores would not be affected, and we would still have bags to line our trash bins and use to pick up our doggy doo. The only plastic bags allowed in big-box stores would be compostable bags that meet ASTM D6400 standards. These bags are indistinguishable from plastic bags to the consumer and biodegrade at rates comparable to other compostable materials. This bill is bipartisan, and well supported with 37 co-sponsors.
The time is now for Massachusetts to take action on plastic bags. Not only are they a ubiquitous eyesore that threaten our wildlife, but they also incur a cost. Although plastic bags appear free to the consumer at check-out, they rack up a price after they leave the trash bin.
The biggest price tag probably comes from cleaning them out of the sewer systems. In Portland, Ore., they estimated that plastic bags cost the city $2.3 million in drain and sewer maintenance.
Just last month, Portland decided to cut those costs and became the latest city to join the ranks of Washington, D.C.; Westport, Conn.; Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nantucket, and many others in passing legislation that discourages the use of plastic bags.
In addition to sewer systems, plastic bags clog up recycling operations. Plastic bags are only recyclable in special plastic-bag-recycling streams, but they make their way into other recycling streams all the same. It is estimated that 20 percent to 30 percent of labor costs at recycling operations are devoted to workers removing plastic bags from the stream and pulling them off of jammed gears.
Let’s stop lying to ourselves that plastic bags are free, and use our tax dollars more efficiently.
Plastic bags also need to be reduced because there is no good way to dispose of them. We can try to recycle them, but the EPA estimates that we perform rather poorly here: Only 5.2 percent of plastic bags are recycled.
Even recycling plastic bags poses many challenges. It takes about $4,000 to recycle a ton of plastic bags, which are then sold on the market for only $32. Once again, getting rid of plastic bags is a money suck.
If we just throw our plastic bags out with the rest of the trash they still get blown away into our streets, trees, gardens, parks and rivers, which have to be cleaned up later.
We need to rethink how we use plastic bags so we can rid ourselves of the invasive species, the eyesore, the hidden cost.
We need more individuals bringing reusable bags to the grocery store. We need letters to our municipal officers and our state representatives saying we want plastic-bag-reducing policies in our cities and state.
Like other communities, we can reduce this pollution with the amount of effort it takes to bring a cloth bag to the store, and save ourselves money at the same time.
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Kathleen Cohen is summer campaign associate at Environment Massachusetts, a statewide, citizen-based environmental advocacy organization.
