A ban on standard-sized, single-use plastic bags on retail checkout at New Canaan businesses can only work if merchants themselves are not only backing but also leading the effort, town conservation officials say.
Given that paper bags can cost four or five times more than plastic ones, the town must think creatively about how the change feasibly could happen without damaging the bottom line for local businesses that already do so much to support New Canaan causes, community events and human services needs, members of the Conservation Commission said at their most recent meeting.
Those interested in pursuing a focused ban on single-use plastic bags must “step out with small merchants so that the small merchants are really spearheading it, so they have a leadership role with us helping—that is how I would love to see it happen in New Canaan, because we love our small businesses and they do so much for the town,” commissioner Miki Porta said at the group’s Dec. 11 meeting, held in the Art Room at Lapham Community Center. “It really has to be a partnership.”
Westport, prompted by concerns for the environment (more on that below), has had a ban in effect since March of 2009, and Liz Milwe and Jeff Weiser, each of whom helped lead Westport toward its plastic bag ban, attended the meeting as guests, as did town resident Molly Farnsworth, one advocate for a similar effort here.
Saying Westport has maintained a “very vibrant merchant scene” with the “highest-grossing Stop & Shop in the system,” Milwe and Weiser said the town’s plastic bag ban has gone smoothly and been widely embraced by residents, most of whom now are in the habit of bringing reusable canvas bags to town when they shop for groceries or other items. Data captured after the ban showed that about 55 percent of Westporters were using reusable bags at shops, with the balance getting paper bags, Weiser said.
Concerns about residents shopping elsewhere in order to get their plastic bags proved unfounded, he said, as did worries about who would enforce the ban. The town’s conservation director was appointed the task of serving written notices with a threat of fines for recurring violators, and never had to assess major fines of the town ordinance banning plastic bags, he said. Milwe said that bigger stores initially pushed back far more than smaller ones, and Weiser added that the early opponents of the ban were the Connecticut Food Council, representing chain grocery stores, and the American Chemical Council, representing the plastics industry.
Westport is the only Connecticut town to institute a ban. As outlined in this very informative paper from the Connecticut Office of Legislative Research, the Westport ban applies to retail checkout of purchased goods and doesn’t apply to produce bags, those used to carry meat or bags over 28-by-36 inches. There are other exceptions to the ban—such as tag sales, restaurants and nonprofit organizations, under Westport’s ordinance.
Fairfield County towns including Fairfield and Wilton have inquired about instituting bans, but for the most part only got so far as what the meeting’s guests described as ineffective “education” efforts, and Darien got very close to passing a ban that was opposed by locally owned Palmer’s Market of Noroton, they said.
“If a local merchant isn’t interested, then a town should not do it, but the economics are such that it really should work OK,” Weiser said.
Also in attendance at the meeting was Alex Stewart of Walter Stewart’s, New Canaan’s established and independently owned market, a local business that supports a wide range of community efforts. Milwe and Weiser commended Stewart for taking part in past discussions about the prospect of a ban.
The Elm Street store has sold its heavier canvas bags at cost, and though some customers do return to use those for their groceries, plastic bags remain the most popular option. The financial considerations of switching to all-paper are considerable: Stewart estimated that, assuming a one-for-one switch from plastic to all paper, the business straightaway could be looking at up to $70,000 off of the bottom line annually.
“I can understand how Palmer’s would have some very serious concerns,” he said. “They are an independent store, they do not have a chain to spread the cost over, so I get where they are coming from with that.”
The Environmental Protection Agency includes plastic bags among those plastic products that often have a detrimental effect on marine life, in part because several dozen species mistake the bags for food and ingest them. In New Canaan, plastic bags can end up along roadsides and in trees and public parks, or else floating out to Long Island Sound, commissioners said.
Porta said she would tap the Westport experts for information on towns that successfully have transitioned away from plastic bags, especially where solutions were found to unburden financially the businesses in those municipalities.
“I don’t think anybody around this table would dispute they are odious, those single-use bags,” she said. “But I wonder if you know of any place where this has happened where the financial burden doesn’t fall entirely on the merchant, where there wasn’t some effort made? Because the small merchants in this town are so exhausted, they do so much for the community in terms of underwriting just everything.”