May Ban Plastic Bags
Members of East Hampton Town’s litter and energy sustainability committees supported the town board’s proposed ban on plastic shopping bags at a hearing last week, citing the resources used in their manufacture and the bags’ persistence in the environment.
A spokesman for the grocery-store industry cast the lone voice against the ban, questioning the other speakers’ conclusions. Jay M. Peltz, a vice president and the general counsel of the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, said the ban has been cast as a panacea to the environmental issues involved, without a thorough investigation into its actual effect.
For instance, he said, when plastic bags are banned, consumers tend to use more paper bags, and their manufacture has a greater environmental impact. The issue, he said, is more complex than advocates of plastic-bag ban make out.
“If paper bags are as detrimental as plastic, then we should do something about them, too,” said Jeanne Frankl of Amagansett.
Those in favor of the ban, like Frank Dalene, chairman of the sustainability committee, and Dieter von Lehsten, a co-chairman of the committee’s Southampton Town counterpart, talked about the massive number of plastic bags used globally, and how the plastic amasses in the oceans and becomes part of the food chain. “These bags never quite vanish,” Mr. von Lehsten said. Consumers can be taught to use reusable tote bags, said Mr. Dalene.
Wearing a plastic bag plucked from the roadside on her way to Town Hall around her neck like a scarf, Kathleen Kirkwood, a member of East Hampton’s recycling and litter committee, said banning the thin plastic bags described as “single-use” bags has become “standard business and operating procedure from Malibu to Hawaii.”
“There’s just too much litter in East Hampton right now,” said Arline Gidion, another member of the litter committee. Afton DiSunno, also a member, cited the detrimental effects of wind-blown plastic bags on whales, turtles, and other wildlife who may ingest them.
Before enacting a ban on plastic bags, asserted Mr. Peltz, the town is required to follow State Environmental Quality Review Act procedures and analyze its potential environmental effects. New York municipalities that have already enacted plastic-bag bans have failed to submit “SEQRA-required evidence” in support, he said.
“I’m neither for nor against this, but we’re talking about changing the law,” said Kyle Lynch, an attorney. Town officials must do their “due diligence,” said Mr. Lynch. No facts specific to East Hampton had been presented, he added.
Jeremy Samuelson, executive director of Concerned Citizens of Montauk, called Mr. Peltz’s comments the “latest round of arguments” from the food industry. “But come on — nobody has ever done a necropsy on a whale and found a reusable bag in its stomach. Help us do better,” he said to the town board.
The hearing was held open and will be reconvened at the board’s Dec. 18 meeting.