Welcome to the third week of the Our Common Agenda Education Series, featuring the Healthy Chesapeake Bay, Rivers, & Creeks chapter. In this week’s blog post, we will be highlighting our plastic bag bill policy and the Virginia localities who have taken action on plastic reduction in the last few weeks.
Plastics are raging war on our environment and our health, but VCN and our partners are fighting back! Building on the growing concern and increased willingness to take action to decrease the amount of plastic waste in Virginia’s environment, now is the time to craft policies and laws that will keep man-made waste out of Virginia’s streams, rivers, and coastal waters. There are many strategies to do this – eliminating the most harmful types of waste, incentivizing sustainable disposal, shifting to reusable products – but today we will consider implementing a plastic bag tax as a policy tool to reduce the amount of plastics in our water, environment, and diet.
Why is plastic reduction policy so important?
Most plastics are designed to be single-use. If properly disposed of, single-use plastics ultimately end up in the landfill or are incinerated at chemical conversion facilities, creating pollution while still requiring producers to extract even more natural resources to make new materials. However, not all plastics are even properly disposed of – only 10% of plastic bags actually make it back to the proper recycling bins!
As you can see in Clean Virginia Waterway’s findings, an alarming amount of plastics end up in our environment, and Virginia’s natural landscapes and waterways are paying the price. Wildlife – including turtles, birds, fish, mammals, and important water-filtering bivalves like oysters and mussels – often mistake plastic items for food, can be entangled in debris, or displaced from their habitat.
Exposure to plastic additives and related toxins can have negative biological effects on humans as well. To make matters worse, single-use plastics disproportionately affect communities of color, low-income communities, and Indigenous communities.
Why a plastic bag fee?
The top 10 Items found in 2019 statewide beach cleanups. Image credit: Clean Virginia Waterways of Longwood University
We have long relied on a broken recycling system and local stewards to keep Virginia’s land and water litter-free. This approach has proven to be insufficient in action, funding, and impact as it does little to reduce single-use production or hold plastic producers responsible for the negative, long-term impacts.
To protect our waterways and ocean from plastic pollution, we need to eliminate harmful single-use plastics at the source. Placing fees on single-use plastic bags is an extremely effective policy tool in reducing plastic bag consumption. According to several independent studies, bag usage dropped by more than 50% in less than five years after Washington DC implemented its plastic bag fee!
What is Virginia’s current plastic bag law?
In 2020, VCN lobbied for plastic reduction policy, and the Virginia General Assembly passed SB 11, which gives local communities the ability to place a 5-cent fee on single-use plastic bags. The fees will go towards environmental cleanups and accessibility of reusable bags, therefore decreasing the amount of plastic bags being used and disposed of in our environment.
Which Virginia localities are reducing plastic bags?
Several localities have adopted a plastic bag fee this year, which will go into effect on January 1st, 2022:
- May: Roanoke became the first local government in the state to adopt an ordinance taxing disposable plastic shopping bags.
- September 14th: The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors enacted the Plastic Bag Tax by a vote of 9-1. Walmart and Target are not exempt from the bag fee.
- September 18th: The Alexandria City Council adopted local plastic bag tax ordinances.
- September 18th: Arlington County Board adopted local plastic bag tax ordinances.
- September 28th: Fredericksburg City Council unanimously passed their bag fee ordinance.
- Next up: City of Richmond? The Richmond City Council promised a plastic bag policy in their “climate crisis” resolution.
As Virginia’s cities and counties implement local enactment of fees on single-use plastic bags, VCN will ask our legislators to consider a uniform, state-level policy to reduce plastic bags. But, we know our work doesn’t stop here – see our other plastic reduction policy recommendations below from the “Reducing Single-Use PLastics, Litter, & Marine Debris in Virginia” policy paper.
Our Plastic Policy Recommendations
- Establish a statewide beverage container deposit program (often referred to as a Bottle Bill).
- Establish a producer stewardship program targeting single-use plastic packaging and products.
- Raise the Virginia Litter Tax, and expand usage of funds to nonprofits which organize most of Virginia’s litter cleanups and public outreach campaigns.
Thank you to our Partners at Clean Virginia Waterways, Environment Virginia, Lynnhaven River NOW, EcoAction Arlington, Citizen’s Climate Lobby, 350 Fairfax, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and Friends of the Rappahannock for fighting to reduce plastic waste!