Portsmouth is weighing a ban on plastic bags, and not all residents are happy about it
By Larry Clow
Why was Mark Brighton standing outside the Lafayette Road Market Basket in Portsmouth on a chilly Friday evening?
“Basically, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” he explained. Specifically, he’s mad about a proposed ordinance that would ban single-use plastic bags in the city and levy a 10-cent fee on paper bags. Since city councilor Brad Lown brought the ordinance before the council in late January, Brighton has been stationed outside the grocery store for a few hours at a time, collecting signatures for a petition drive to block the ordinance.
The ordinance would ban stores from using “single-use carryout plastic bags” — the kind you get at the grocery store or pharmacy. It also prohibits using the bags at any city facility, city-managed concession area, and events sponsored or permitted by the city. The ban doesn’t cover plastic bags without handles (like the kind used for produce and meat at grocery stores), dog waste bags, or other bags. The ordinance also calls for retailers to charge a 10-cent fee for recyclable paper bags.
Any retailer caught giving customers plastic bags would first face a warning and, on subsequent infractions, a possible $100 fine. The ordinance would take effect a year from the date it passes.
“We want to disincentivize carryout bags in general and get people to bring their own bags to stores,” said Kevin Lucey, a volunteer with the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation who helped work on the ordinance.
Lown introduced the ordinance on behalf of Surfrider’s New Hampshire chapter. In 2012, the group launched its “Rise Above Plastics” campaign to reduce plastic pollution in the Seacoast. Some of those efforts have been focused on limiting plastic bags in the city — a 2014 petition drive by the group collected signatures from 218 city residents and 233 non-residents in support of a plastic bag ban.
Surfrider Foundation volunteers campaign in support of a plastic bag ban in Market Square.
According to ban supporters, plastic bags are a major source of pollution. The bags don’t readily decompose and are rarely recycled. And there is a lot of them: According to the York, Maine-based group Bring Your Own Bag York, residents in York use 600 million plastic bags each year.
“It makes sense to me to limit the availability of an item that causes environmental damage,” Lown said. “This is a small effort in one place to try to limit the availability of the bags.”
Gaining traction
Portsmouth is the latest Seacoast city to consider such an ordinance. In Newburyport, Mass., an ordinance banning plastic bags is slated to take effect on March 29. Bring Your Own Bag York presented a plastic bag ordinance to selectmen in February that would require businesses that earn more than 2 percent of their gross sales from food to charge customers a minimum fee of five cents for each single-use plastic or paper bag. In Portland, Maine, an ordinance taking effect in April charges a fee for paper and plastic bags and bans Styrofoam containers.
Plastic bag bans are gaining traction across the country. In 2014, California became the first state to ban single-use plastic bags, and, according to data from the Surfrider Foundation, nine communities in Texas have passed ordinances that either ban plastic bags or place a fee on them.
On a recent Friday, Brighton was outside Market Basket with a small table, a few clipboards, and plenty of thick black markers, asking customers what they use plastic bags for and how they feel about a possible ban. Most were supportive of a ban, if a bit soft-spoken. Some, though, were more animated.
“This is bullshit. What’s the point?” said Jack Wright of Portsmouth. He’s against a ban and signed Brighton’s petition. Bags are cheap to produce and don’t require trees to make, unlike paper bags, he said. The ban, he added, is “nonsense.”
Consumer choice
Close to 200 people had signed Brighton’s petition as of last week. This isn’t so much an environmental issue as it is about freedom of choice, Brighton said. Consumers should determine whether a business uses plastic bags by making a choice — patronizing businesses that use the bags, for example, or asking businesses to provide an alternative, he said.
“I trust the American public to make a judgment,” he said. “The more choice in a marketplace, the better.”
According to Lown, the consumer-choice argument doesn’t hold up. There are plenty of examples of governments — local, state, and federal — that limit choices when those choices could be harmful. That’s why DDT is no longer used as a pesticide, or why smoking in restaurants and bars is prohibited, Lown said.
“I’m all for consumer choice, but you have to balance the value of that against the potential harm of these items.” — city councilor Brad Lown
“I’m all for consumer choice, but you have to balance the value of that against the potential harm of these items,” he added.
According to data from the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, a Portsmouth-based nonprofit that conducts regular beach cleanups, in September and October 2014, volunteers picked up about 2,000 pounds of litter on local beaches. Cigarette butts make up the majority of the litter, but plastics also account for a significant portion. Food wrappers, bottle caps, packaging, straws and stirrers, plastic bottles, and bags account for some 14 percent of the litter.
But Brighton isn’t convinced. “A lot of these issues are decided at the gut level,” he said. Compared to other litter, like cigarette butts and plastic or glass containers, plastic bags make up a small portion of the litter found on beaches. “I can live with that,” Brighton said.
A business problem
Banning bags makes sense, according to Surfrider volunteer Kevin Lucey. Bags littering beaches and waterways aren’t just an environmental problem — they’re a business problem.
“There are nine coastal communities in Massachusetts that have implemented either a ban or a fee (on plastic bags). Those communities rely on tourism dollars … and don’t want to see their beaches trashed,” he said.
“If you look on roadsides all throughout the Seacoast, you’ll see (plastic bags) stuck in trees.” — Kevin Lucey of the Surfrider Foundation
The bags aren’t only found on beaches. “If you look on roadsides all throughout the Seacoast, you’ll see them stuck in trees,” Lucey said.
The city’s sustainability committee and city attorney Robert Sullivan are reviewing the ordinance. Once the review is complete, it will return to the council for a first reading and a public hearing. Brighton said he and Lown have tentative plans to debate the issue on Portsmouth Community Radio later this month.
In the meantime, Lown said he’s hearing about both sides of the issue from residents. “People like to use plastic bags because they’re so convenient, and when someone like me comes along and suggests that habit change, a lot of people don’t like that,” he said. “Other people do like it, and think it’s a move in the right direction for the sake of the environment.”