Bag Ban Consensus Is Forming
A ban in East Hampton Town of commonly used thin plastic bags is gaining favor among organizations and some business owners, as well as members of the town board, who are expected to set it for public hearing with the idea of its becoming effective at the end of 2015. Called single-use bags, they are already banned in East Hampton and Southampton Villages.
According to calculations by the town Natural Resources Department, there are 10.7 million such bags used in town every year. The calculation was based on an Environmental Protection Agency estimate that 104 billion of the bags are used each year in the United States.
At a town board meeting on Tuesday, Frank Dalene, the chair of East Hampton’s energy sustainability committee, said each bag is used for an average of only 12 minutes, “but they remain in our landfills for years.”
In a poll she conducted online, Deborah Klughers, the head of the town’s recycling and litter committee and an East Hampton Town Trustee, said at the meeting, 92 percent of respondents favored some kind of plastic bag ban.
The plastic, which does not disappear or break down in the environment, “is now entering the human food chain,” Dieter von Lehsten, co-chair of Southampton Town’s sustainable green advisory committee, said at the meeting.
And John Botos of the Natural Resources Department said they are tied to disruptions of the endocrine system. There are “social costs” to inaction, he said.
“It’s important for us to start taking these steps,” said Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who has advanced the initiative. She and Mr. Botos have been meeting with businesspeople who would be affected by the ban, and she said, so far, they are on board.
Margaret Turner, the executive director of the East Hampton Business Alliance, proved that point. Outreach and education would be critical “so that people don’t fear this, and realize it’s not going to hurt so much,” she said.
Catherine Foley, an owner of the Air and Speed Surf Shop in Montauk, told the board that she supported the ban wholeheartedly. “The public is ready,” she said. “They just need continued encouragement, guidance, and support.”
Ms. Overby envisions announcing a pending bag ban and launching educational efforts on Earth Day next April, with a law to go into effect at the end of 2015.
If nearby municipalities discussing similar actions follow the same schedule, Mr. von Lehsten said, “that will give a big impetus for Suffolk County,” and perhaps, eventually, New York City to follow suit.
Bans on single-use plastic bags are already in place in several big cities, including Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, he said, and had been passed by 103 California municipalities before a statewide ban was enacted there last week.
“The whole movement is really a bottom-up movement,” he said. Locally, he added, the Milk Pail farm stand in Water Mill recently posted a sign saying it would no longer use plastic bags, and the Waldbaum’s in Southampton is charging a fee for each paper bag a customer uses, and is donating that revenue to the Peconic Land Trust. The East Hampton Waldbaum’s also charges for paper bags following the ban in the village.