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Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Wilton Considering Plastic Bag Ban

The Town of Wilton is considering enacting a ban on plastic bags at retail similar to Westport’s ordinance following a presentation by a group of members from the Westport Representative Town Meeting (RTM).

Wilton’s Board of Selectmen heard about the Westport experience at its meeting Monday night.

“This plastic bag ordinance is a great idea,” said First Selectman William Brennan, according to a report on the Wilton Villager Web site.

“Wilton has been interested in moving in this direction for some time, and it’s wonderful to get the perspective of a town (which) already has this ordinance in place.”

Jonathan Cunitz, a Westport RTM member from District 4 who helped enact the town’s plastic bag ordinance, said since it was enacted on Sept. 2, 2008, there have not been any problems with the ban of plastic bags.

In the ordinance’s first year, he estimated Westport eliminated the use of more than one million plastic bags, and that number will continue to increase in future years.

Brennan said he thinks Wilton residents would be open to enacting a plastic bag ordinance in town.

“I know that a lot of residents in Wilton have already given up using plastic bags,” he said. “Since many people aren’t using them anymore, I think there will be support to get rid of plastic bags in Wilton.”

Within the next six months, Brennan said, discussion on a possible plastic bag ordinance be will put on the selectmen’s agenda.

“We are obviously very excited about this,” he said. “Our job is to do things that make sense, and this makes sense.”

Comments:     Comment Policy

I think our ban is working well EXCEPT for the plastic bags attached to mailboxes, yellow pages in plastic bags, and plastic bags on newspapers thrown into driveways… Doesn’t the ban extend to these distributors/litters? Why are my driveway and mailbox the targets of unwanted, environmentally destructive litter?

Why?  Water!

Nothing incites environmental pet peeves than plastic shopping bags. So many false and misleading stories abound that nobody knows the true story. An Environmental Impact Statement or Study looks at all of the ramifications. Oddly, environmentalists oppose an EIS on bags in no uncertain terms. Usually the opposition of an EIS tells you who is trying to mislead officials and the public at large.

I work for a plastic bag Co. If the ban goes through, we will receive increased profits from the ban. Plastic tonnage into landfills will climb dramatically just as it did in Ireland when they banned and taxed plastic bags. Bag manufacturers reported sales increases of 70% to 200% in the year after the bag ban. 80% of 6 gram shopping bags are reused as household trash bags. 12% are recycled. Customers in Ireland had to purchase heavy 22 gram trash bags in cardboard boxes to dispose of their trash. Bag Companies had to hire hundreds of workers. Some companies even had to add evening production shifts. The truth can be stranger than environmentalist fiction.

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