TESTIMONY
of
Catherine Plume
DC Chapter of the Sierra Club
before the
D.C. Council Committee for Transportation and Environment
November 9, 2018
John A. Wilson Building, Room 500
I’m Catherine Plume, a lifelong environmentalist, a board member and Conservation Chair of the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club, a member of the Chapter’s Zero Waste Committee, blogger and tweeter for the DC Recycler, a 20-year resident of Ward 6, and a recently established resident of Ward 4.
I am here today to testify on behalf of the Sierra Club regarding the bill B22-0902 known as the Sustainable Straws and Stirrers Amendment Act of 2018. But, before I elaborate on this issue, on behalf of the Sierra Club, I would like to congratulate Councilmember Cheh on her recent reelection victory. We sincerely appreciate your efforts to make DC an environmentally and climate friendly city that are resulting in DC being a recognized leader for its greening efforts. The Club looks forward to continued collaboration with you and other councilmembers on these fronts.
The Sierra Club supports the Sustainable Straws and Stirrers bill, while wholeheartedly supporting that anyone with a disability requiring straws should have ready and free access to them. Over 500 million straws are used in the US every day, and not all of these are disposed of properly. With the enactment of the DC bag fee and the ban on polystyrene containers for food, straws and plastic bottles now represent primary waste steams in DC’s rivers. According to the Alice Ferguson Foundation, during just one of their clean up events, volunteers found and collected more than 1,600 straws along our shoreline....in three hours! These straws contribute to pollution in our waterways and don’t really breakdown in this environment; they break up into smaller ‘microplastics’, which are consumed by animals and aquatic life – and eventually even us humans.
The Sierra Club’s Zero Waste Committee has been working on the straw issue for over two years. Through our work, we’ve identified restaurants such as Farmers Restaurant Group and Busboys & Poets that are taking their own initiatives to reduce straw usage in their restaurants. We congratulate these establishments! We’ve also met with other restaurant owners who have tried to reduce their straw use, but after trial runs, have returned to using straws to satisfy customer demand. Management at these restaurants have told us they will welcome legislation and/or regulation for banning straws and stirrers to help educate their customers.
The Sierra Club was pleased to see that DPW Director Shorter recently added straws and stirrers to the list of items that must be provided in a compostable form by January 1, 2019. We’re also pleased to learn that DPW and DOEE are collaborating on outreach and eventual enforcement of this effort, and the Sierra Club, along with groups like DC Doesn’t Suck, looks forward to helping with this effort. Given this effort and the unlikelihood that this proposed bill could pass during this current council session, we suggest that the Committee hold off on moving forward with this bill until the regulations can become enacted. Then, we would be in a better position to determine if legislation is required and if the current bill should be amended.
In the meantime, we urge the Committee to use its resources instead to begin to draft a bottle bill for the District. We were pleased to hear that Councilmember Cheh is planning to work on this issue while we attended the Trash Summit. We have also heard other Councilmembers discuss the idea of moving forward on such legislation in recent months. The Sierra Club stands ready to help with such legislation in any way we can.
We would also like to address the Mayor’s List of Recyclables. This list of over 200 items is up for review. As recycling markets are fluctuating drastically with the Chinese import ban on US recyclables, we urge the District to take a critical look at the Mayor’s List. According to a Waste Management representative at their Elkridge facility which receives much of DC’s recycling, some 40% of recyclables received at that plant are currently being landfilled or incinerated due to a lack of recycling markets. This reality is giving DC a false reading on its actual diversion rate. We urge DPW to focus its efforts to reduce waste through programs such as composting, grasscycling, and the long promised, but as-of-yet-not-delivered “pay/save as you throw” pilot versus expanding the list of recyclables.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.