A few nights ago, when my husband and I entered the Giant store near Riderwood, I noticed something different. All the racks at the end of the check-out counters were empty. These are the metal structures that, until recently, held hundreds of single-use, thin white plastic bags into which the checkers loaded customers’ groceries.
All those bag racks! All empty, serving no function at all. Also at the end of each check-out counter was a large, neat pile of paper grocery bags. Not a single-use plastic bag in sight!
What I was seeing was the result of a new law that went into effect in Montgomery County on January 1. Thanks to the Bring Your Own Bag law, most Montgomery County retailers are no longer allowed to provide customers with plastic bags at checkout. Instead, customers must bring their own bags or pay 10 cents for each paper bag provided by the retailer.
Montgomery County has now joined Prince Georges County in banning most retailers from providing plastic bags for taking out purchases. Prince Georges County’s Better Bag Bill has been in effect since January 2024. Since Riderwood includes apartments in both counties, we residents now do most of our local shopping at retailers covered by the ban.
Many Riderwood residents and others have long advocated for such laws. And local county officials paid attention. The aim of the new law, according to the Montgomery County website, is to reduce plastic pollution, to protect local waterways and wildlife, and to promote reusable bag use by consumers. The Montgomery County law allows retailers to keep half of the 10 cents they take in for each paper bag they provide. The remaining half goes to the county government for local water quality and litter control programs.
Prince Georges County’s Better Bag Bill is similar in its intent. However, PG’s law allows retailers to keep the entire 10 cents customers are charged for the paper bags provided.
One might wonder whether these laws are effective in keeping plastic out of the environment, where it never decomposes but only breaks down into increasingly smaller bits. These tiny bits, known as microplastics, have been found literally everywhere—in soils, in streams, rivers, and oceans, in the snow on mountains, and in the bodies of many animals, including humans.
Local evidence indicates that such laws are effective at reducing plastics pollution.
While Montgomery County’s law has been in effect for only a few weeks, we have two years of data to use to assess the PG law. And the data show a significant shift in shopper behavior!
To measure the Prince Georges County law’s effectiveness, the Maryland Sierra Club did a comparison study. Before the law went into effect, Club volunteers observed shoppers exiting grocery stores across the county. Of the shoppers they observed, 88% were carrying single-use plastic bags. Just 12% were carrying reusable bags or no bags at all.
Then, in May 2024, four months after the law went into effect, the Sierra Club repeated their observations. Over four weekends, volunteers observed 9,000 shoppers exiting the same grocery stores across the county. This time they saw that the proportion of shoppers who brought their own bags or opted for no bag surged from 12% to 69%!
Both county laws include exemptions for certain purchases, including bulk items, prescription drugs, and drycleaning. And Montgomery County offers help to low-income consumers. Purchases that are paid partly or entirely with food assistance like SNAP or WIC are exempt from the law. And the county partners with the non-profit Housing Opportunities Commission and local service agencies to distribute free reusable bags to low income households across the county.
So it’s a new day here in suburban Maryland. We will all be using significantly fewer plastic bags. That’s good for anyone who would prefer to see less litter, who doesn’t like the idea of plastic bags clogging storm drains, and who is concerned about microplastics in the oceans and in our own bodies.
Finally, I would like to close with a funny Mockumentary. Called “The Majestic Plastic Bag,” it tells, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, of the ‘heroic’ journey of a plastic bag from its origin on the plains, to its eventual ‘home’ far away in the Pacific Ocean. I recommend it for a fun four minutes. April Moore for ECO-R
Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLgh9h2ePYw