Ban The Bag In Baltimore?

On Monday night, Baltimore City Council approved amendments to its bag bill, removing the proposed fee and adopting a ban on plastic shopping bags.

While a ban on plastic bags is a step in the right direction for the environment, and brings much-needed attention to the serious litter problem we have here in Baltimore, Blue Water Baltimore has some concerns with the current proposal.

The policy is meant to be a source reduction strategy, but rather than encouraging customers to stop using disposable bags altogether it instead incentivizes the use of paper bags. Paper bags require many more resources to produce than plastic bags do.

Blue Water Baltimore believes that motivating consumers to use reusable bags is a much more effective method of reducing disposable bag use and litter.

Baltimore should adopt comprehensive and collaborative trash reduction strategies if it wants to achieve cleaner, healthier communities and waterways. We hope that the introduction of this bill will be the start of a much broader conversation about how to best achieve these goals.