Massachusetts to tackle plastic bag pollution

By Pam Sinotte

What do Brookline, California and Hawaii have in common? Each has enacted laws to reduce plastic bag pollution – and now we in the state of Massachusetts have the opportunity to do the same.

Trees festooned with plastic bags may not be very appealing, but the problem of plastic bags goes much deeper than the visuals. Consider this:

• 100 billion single-use plastic bags are used each year in the United States, and Massachusetts alone uses 4.2 billion.
• The 700 billion plastics bags used in the world each year contribute to global warming and climate disruption via fossil fuel energy used to produce and transport them and carbon emissions as they decompose.
• Plastic bag pollution in our oceans causes $13 billion in marine damage yearly.

There are four bills in the Massachusetts legislature’s Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture to reduce single-use plastic bags. The bills differ slightly, but all deserve our support. They are H. 663 – An Act to reduce plastic bag pollution (submitted by Rep. Lori Ehrlich), H. 739 – An Act relative to plastic bag reduction (by Rep. Denise Provost), S. 406 An Act relative to plastic bag reduction (by Sen. James Eldridge), and S. 434 – An Act to prohibit plastic carry-out bags by 2019 (by Sen. Brian Joyce). To read these bills in their entirety, go to malegislature.gov/Bills/Search.

Please email, call and/or write your state elected officials and ask them to support these bills in the Committee. Ask that these bills be sent to the Joint Ways and Means Committee. You can find elected officials’ addresses at Wheredoivotema.com. Please ask your friends to join the effort, and stay tuned for updates from GreeningRozzie.