Outer Banks shoppers at large retailers would have the option of paper or nothing under a bill the Senate approved today.
The legislation, which passed 47 to 1, would prohibit those stores from using plastic shopping bags. Senate President Pro Tem Marc Basnight, a Manteo Democrat, is pushing the bill, which applies to Dare, Currituck and Hyde counties. Basnight said the flimsy bags are polluting the landscape of the Outer Banks, which relies on its landscape to attract tourism business.
The bill's chief sponsor, Sen. Josh Stein, a Raleigh Democrat, described the bill as a pilot program that could go statewide. The goal is to encourage shoppers to use reusable bags, such as the cloth totes sold at groceries, and eventually eliminate both paper and plastic bags.
Nearly 20 states have considered or imposed legislation regulating plastic bags, but only the city of San Francisco has banned them.
Retailers argue that paper bags made from recycled material, which are permitted by the bill, cost more and that retrofitting stores that are set up for plastic bags also will create costs that are passed along to customers. The wiser approach, they argue, is to encourage or even mandate recycling.
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Re: Senate votes to ban the bags
I think that the implementation of this bill should start in Josh Stein's district.
When will this end? What I am saying is that how did we get to this point of using these plastic bags? This came about because environmentalists were complaining we were chopping down too many trees to make paper bags.
Actually if the paper bags were not so much more expensive than the plastic ones this bill would be a slam dunk. We have tree farms that grow trees strictly for making many types of paper products.
I do protest wheening people off the pastic bags, that in their production involve the use of petroleum products. What I detest is this is ANOTHER thing the government is telling us NO we cannot so. Why don't we let the FREE capitalistic system that exists in other states be used here in North Carolina?