By Richard Kaufman
March 12 marked the one year anniversary of the adoption of Greenwich’s plastic bag ban by the Greenwich RTM. The ordinance has been a success for the town since it was officially implemented in September of 2018.
The ordinance, which prohibits the distribution of plastic bags at the point of checkout at locations such as grocery stores, clothing retailers, farmers’ markets and even the dentist, was approved by the Representative Town Meeting last March, with no fee attached, by a vote of 141 to 54, with two abstentions.
A three-year sunset clause was included in the vote, which allows the town to revisit the ordinance in 2021 to make changes or amend it with perhaps a fee.
Jeanine Behr Getz, President of BYO Greenwich, the citizen-driven group that led the charge for the initiative, said BYO is benchmarking and collecting data on bag usage from three stores in town. The data will be looked at annually and used when the ordinance is revisited in 2021.
“We feel like we’ll have good data by then, which we couldn’t get when we started this,” she said.
Getz said the rollout of the ordinance went smoother than expected. BYO Greenwich, the Town of Greenwich and the Greenwich Chamber of Commerce worked cohesively to spread the word to businesses and residents.
“I feel like the six months leading into it, we did as much as we could [to get the word out],” Getz said. “Historically, in the 17 towns we interviewed before we proposed the ordinance, we found the first six months after the effective date were the most crucial as far as implementation, education opportunities and working with the residents and the businesses to bring your own bags.”
Director of Environmental Affairs for Greenwich, Patricia Sesto, praised BYO Greenwich for the work they’ve done with the ordinance.
“BYO is a critical piece. They set up a beautiful website with all of the information users and retailers needed. The towns who have contacted me and asked what made this ordinance successful, having a citizen group to back you up is a big deal. They’ve made a huge difference,” Sesto said.
The Conservation Commission of the Department of Environmental Affairs is in charge of enforcing the ordinance.
Businesses were given from March to September of 2018 to use up their stock of plastic bags.
Sesto said that out of the 2,000 or so retail businesses around town, only 13 contacted her and requested extensions. Two additional businesses were denied, and two were granted conditional permanent waivers.
One business that has embraced the ordinance, even though their product doesn’t easily do well in paper, is Fjord Fish Market in Cos Cob.
“It’s been something that has been on our to-do list for a while, to change over to paper and reusable bags. It’s a difficult transition for fish. The ordinance gave us the push that we needed to actually bite the bullet,” owner Jim Thistle said, noting that it was a little more expensive to make the switch. “We also looked at it as a marketing opportunity also to kind of offset some of the expense. We put our name on it, and we came up with some really nice bags. We try each year to go through a few points where we want to get better and eliminating plastic bags had been one of them.”
Some businesses around town were already taking steps to limit plastic use before the ordinance was passed, such as The Granola Bar on Greenwich Avenue, which opened in 2016.
“We’ve never used plastic bags,” said Granola Bar Director of Operations, Joe Lopez. “To coincide with the sustainability movement, we’ve also done away with most of our straws, and we’re doing straw-less lids for iced drinks. I think the plastic bag ban in Greenwich is great. However, we can minimize that footprint and make things better than how we found it, the better everyone will be.”
While the elimination of plastic bags has been successful, the true purpose of the initiative is to reduce the use of checkout bags overall. The goal is to have people bring reusable bags when they shop and not rely on plastic or paper.
In order to remind residents of this and “retrain the brain” because there’s currently no fee for paper bags, Getz said, fliers were sent out to businesses around town which instructed cashiers to ask customers at checkout if they need a bag, rather than automatically reaching for one. Maybe a customer has their own, or maybe they forgot them in the car.
“It reduces the business’ waste, and it reduces their economics of bringing bags in,” Getz said.
Westport was one of the first towns in the area to pass such an ordinance in 2008, but other towns really began to follow suit after they saw Greenwich institute the ban.
Both Getz and Sesto said it’s been amazing to see the chain reaction, as seven more towns in Connecticut have passed bag bans since last March. There is even activity underway for a possible statewide policy on plastic bags.
“It’s inspirational. It re-lit the torch that Westport started, and it was the perfect storm,” Getz said, noting that plastic pollution is in the news every day.
“I think it’s terrific. It came from Greenwich, and if that allowed other towns to revisit it, I’m glad we were No. 2,” Sesto added.
Getz said going forward, the impact of the ordinance will hopefully stretch beyond just eliminating plastic bags.
“It’s going to be a constant conversation of remembering your bag, bringing your own straw, bringing your own cup,” she said. “Reduce waste before it starts is really the message, because we have no place to put this stuff anymore.”
