Johnston senator sponsors bill to ban plastic bags statewide

Measure would protect Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay from leading source of plastic pollution

Environment Rhode Island

Providence–– On Wednesday, State Sen. Frank Lombardo (Johnston) introduced a bill in the Rhode Island Senate to ban plastic bags statewide. A counterpart to the House of Representatives bill introduced last month by State Rep. Maria Cimini, the bill prohibits the distribution of disposable plastic shopping bags at the point of sale by Rhode Island retailers, effective January 2015 for large retailers and January 2016 for small businesses.

“Plastic bags are a problem for Johnston and Rhode Island, ” said Sen. Lombardo. “As a thin film, plastic bags are a particular trash nuisance. Whether they’re carelessly discarded or get blown out of garbage trucks, dumpsters, or the landfill, plastic bags easily end up caught in tress, lining roadsides, littering parks, clogging storm drains, and making their way over time downstream to Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island’s coast.”

The introduction comes three weeks after advocacy group Environment Rhode Island delivered over 10,000 public comments to state lawmakers in support of a plastic bag ban in Rhode Island.

“In the Ocean State, there is broad public support for banning plastic bags as a common sense protection for Narragansett Bay,” said Channing Jones, Campaign Director with Environment Rhode Island. “Nothing we use for five minutes should pollute the Bay for future generations.”

Plastic bags are a leading debris type found in Rhode Island coastal cleanups. In waterways like Narragansett Bay, they pose a direct threat to wildlife that can ingest or become entangled in them. Longer term, while plastic bags never biodegrade, they do break apart into increasingly small fragments, accumulating in the marine environment and picking up toxic substances in the water.

State lawmakers first considered Senate and House bills to ban plastic bags in early 2013 (S404 and H5407). Like most bills, the bag ban did not advance to a floor vote in its first session. “Hearings on the plastic bag ban were more heavily attended that any other environmental hearings I saw at the State House last year,” said Jones, “with about three quarters of the testimony supportive. However, opposition from the plastics and packaging industry helped keep the bill from advancing to a floor vote.”

The legislation was supported in the 2013 legislative agenda of the Environment Council of Rhode Island, the state’s largest coalition of environmental groups. The 2014 Cimini-Lombardo bill is largely similar to last year’s version, with some operational tweaks and clarifications. As before, the bill prohibits the distribution of disposable plastic shopping bags at the point of sale by Rhode Island retailers, effective January 2015 for large retailers and January 2016 for small businesses. One notable shift from the 2013 version is that a fee on paper bags is not included in this year’s bill.

Over one hundred communities around the United States, including Barrington, R.I. in October, as well as major cities like Los Angeles and Seattle, have passed similar bans on a municipal level, with or without a paper bag fee.

“Banning plastic bags is a common sense policy that will eliminate a significant source of trash threatening the Bay and other Rhode Island waterways,” said Jones. “I applaud Sen. Lombardo for introducing a Senate bill to ban plastic bags statewide, and I urge Rhode Island lawmakers to pass this legislation in 2014.”