Press Room

Alderman to Propose Tracking Plastic Bags
City Would Gauge Whether Use Declines

By Raymond McCaffrey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 21, 2008

Alderman Samuel Shropshire (D-Ward 7) said he plans to introduce a measure that would help the city monitor whether residents use fewer plastic bags.

Shropshire's proposal to ban the use of plastic bags was defeated in November, but the council is considering an ordinance that calls for residents to voluntarily reuse bags. Shropshire wants to amend that ordinance to have the city keep track of how many bags retailers distribute.

"I want to see measurable results in 10 to 12 months," Shropshire said.

Under the ordinance, the city would issue reusable bags to residents and take other environmentally positive steps, including improving the efficiency of heating systems in government buildings and replacing incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent ones. An Environmental Review Committee would be established to evaluate whether the city's "policies and procedures foster the use of materials that are compostable, recyclable and reusable."

"Our goal is to encourage people wherever possible to use reusable bags," Alderman Ross H. Arnett III (D-Ward 8) told a retail representative during a Feb. 11 public hearing.

The measure was introduced Nov. 19, the same night that a ban on the use of plastic bags by supermarkets and other retailers was rejected by the City Council.

The ban was supported by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Sierra Club's Anne Arundel County Group and other environmentalists. They say fish, birds and turtles can die from ingesting discarded plastic bags, which do not decompose as quickly as paper.

Although supporters included a coalition of local retailers, supermarket representatives and other opponents said that paper is not necessarily better for the environment and that consumers would have to absorb the higher cost of paper bags.

Many elected officials also expressed doubt that a ban would benefit the environment. Shropshire was the only one of the council's seven aldermen to support it.

Shropshire said he is encouraged that communities worldwide are considering such bans. A similar measure is before the Maryland General Assembly.

"It got its start in San Francisco," he said, "but certainly a lot of the publicity came from Annapolis."