The city of Keene and other municipalities statewide could regulate distribution of single-use plastic bags and paper bags under a bill before the N.H. House Municipal and County Government Committee on Tuesday.
Ward 3 City Councilor Andrew Madison, an environmental scientist for the N.H. Department of Environmental Services, said he will likely propose a local ban on plastic bags if House Bill 1119 passes.
Consideration of such a ban was halted last year in Keene based on a legal opinion that it was unclear whether such a regulation would require state authorization, he said. A similar ban was also considered locally in 2016 but not adopted.
“These plastic bags take 500 to 1,000 years to decompose, so it’s something that sticks with us for many generations, but something we use for 10 seconds,” Madison said Monday.
“There is a better way to carry groceries from the store to the car and the car to home than a petroleum product that takes nearly a millennium to decompose, and even then microplastics appear in water, fish and other creatures we consume and ultimately in us.”
He said the bags often become litter, including in the Ashuelot River, which flows past Keene and is cleaned up by volunteers every year.
“We’re lucky to live in the most beautiful part of the state,” Madison said. “It deserves better than to be filled with plastic waste.”
The best environmental practice is for shoppers to use their own cloth bags for groceries, he said.
Ward 2 Councilor Robert Williams said some stores voluntarily decide not to use plastic bags.
“But that doesn’t really get the job done,” he said. “I don’t care where it comes from if it is hanging in a tree by the side of the road.”
He also said plastic bags can get into drainage systems and contribute to costly flooding problems.
Ultimately the bags flow down rivers, reach the ocean and can form islands of floating debris, Williams said.
Other problems often cited regarding plastic bags are the room they take up in landfills and the potential for them to contaminate recyclable materials and jam recycling machinery.
Rep. Nicole Klein-Knight, D-Manchester, is the prime sponsor of HB 1119.
“We can’t wait for green initiatives,” she said. “We’re seeing that the world is on fire. We can’t afford to not ask for things to be happening in every town.
“This isn’t forcing anybody to do anything. It allows each town to create its own rules.”
No Republican signed on as a co-sponsor of her bill, but she hopes to win GOP support.
“There are Republicans in this legislature who believe in protecting the environment,” she said.
In the N.H. House’s online testimony submission system, a total of 59 people have registered support for the bill, while five are in opposition.
Brian P. Moran, director of government affairs for the New England Convenience Store & Energy Marketers Association, filed written testimony opposing the bill.
“While we understand the desire to address the aesthetic nuisance and environmental impacts posed by discarded single-use plastic bags, we object to creating a patchwork of differing and competing regulations across the state,” he said.
“This will lead to confusion by customers, and businesses navigating these requirements, especially for business owners operating across multiple cities and towns.”
He said in the letter that litter is not the fault of any one type of trash. He said that to save money, state and local governments have reduced the number of public trash cans, and this has led to more litter.
Also registering opposition was Zachary Taylor, director of the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance.
“What starts as a request to regulate plastic bags inevitably expands to requests to regulate other products,” he said in written testimony.
“Each expansion of authority to a new product class increases complexity across the state exponentially, disproportionately harming small businesses by undermining their capacity to access economies of scale.”
He said that in Massachusetts, 149 local jurisdictions have carryout bag regulations, with similar numbers covering other products ranging from beverage bottles and takeout containers to straws and lids.
In 2019, a bill to ban plastic bags from distribution at grocery stores and other businesses passed the N.H. House but was gutted in the N.H. Senate amid strong opposition from the grocery industry.
The schedule for the N.H. House Committee on Municipal and County Government calls for consideration of HB 1119 at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in Room 301 of the Legislative Office Building in Concord. Online testimony can be filed before the meeting. The committee meeting will also be streamed on YouTube. The N.H. House website has a page for the filing of online testimony, which can be found in the “Meeting Resources” section at gencourt.state.nh.us.
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