By Lindsay Christinee, Southeastern Pennsylvania Group; Founder, The Wellness Feed
Philadelphia’s single-use plastic bag ban is on its way to being enforced. The bill, said to have gone into effect in July 2021, will currently not be enforced until April 2022. Wanting to push for reusable bags and minimize the devastation single-use plastic bags are having on our environment, representatives from Sierra Club’s Southeastern PA group and other environmental groups are advocating for improvements in the BYOBag ordinance that will make it stronger, easier to enforce and follow the most effective options that other large cities have taken to reduce plastic waste.
At the moment, Philadelphia’s bag ban doesn’t go far enough. A lot of businesses haven’t changed the way that they operate. Pharmacies are still offering single-use plastic bags at checkout. Some residents don’t know that a single-use plastic bag ban will soon take effect. And, environmentalists are concerned that the current bill, if left as is, won’t encourage new behaviors towards plastic bags. In 2015, Chicago implemented a similar bag ban that frustrated environmentalists and policy makers alike for its failure to spark behavioral change.
In 2016, Chicago also changed their single-use plastic bag ban when it wasn’t working. After months of no progress in curbing single-use waste, the city effectively implemented a $0.07 bag fee for single-use plastic and paper bags. Within a year there was a 28% drop in the use of single-use bags. Since then, Chicago has been a case-study for cities seeking public policies that will reduce plastic waste. As one of the country’s largest cities, a drop in plastic waste in Philadelphia could have a big impact on both our environment and other environmental policies.
According to our city, Philadelphians go through 1 billion single-use bags each year. And, these bags, even with the recycling symbol on them, are not recyclable. At the moment, if you do recycle your bags diligently, they aren’t being recycled at the facilities. Philadelphia’s recycling machines can’t recycle items like single-use plastic bags. Instead, they clog machines and end up as landfill waste or worse, polluting our environment. This is especially concerning news for a city that runs along the Delaware River, a major polluter of ocean plastics. According to a study conducted by The Ocean Cleanup, the Delaware River dumps 283,000 pounds of plastic waste into the ocean yearly. And, since we’re not a municipality that can recycle single-use plastic bags, it’s not far off to assume that a lot of that waste comes from plastic bags.
If Philadelphia successfully adopts a single-use plastic bag ban like Chicago, we can be on track to reduce the use of 280,000,000 plastic bags. That’s a difference that extends beyond our concrete borders and into the Atlantic Ocean. The current ban isn’t breaking the cycle of single-use plastic bags. But, if we can adopt a fee, we’ll have a better chance of curbing one form of single-use plastic waste and maybe even begin plans to tackle the next biggest offender — plastic water bottles, which are also next on Chicago’s zero-waste policy agenda.
This blog was included as part of the Fall 2021 Sylvanian newsletter. Please click here to check out more articles from this edition!