As Prince George’s County prepares to implement a plastic bag ban and a mandatory $0.10 fee for paper bags starting Jan. 1, a bill to create a fee exemption for SNAP and WIC users failed in committee last month.
The 3-2 vote from the members of the Transportation, Infrastructure, Energy and Environment Committee on Sept. 28 followed advocates’ testimony that illustrated tensions remaining between environmentalists and economic justice activists despite a growing environmental justice movement.
“I have heard people say, ‘Well, poor people care about the environment too.’ There is no doubt that they do,” said Council member Krystal Oriadha, who introduced the bill, at the hearing. “It is insulting to insinuate that if you have an exemption, that means people don’t care about the environment, or the only way that this group of people can learn is by having a $0.10 penalty associated with it.”
The Better Bag Bill, which the Prince George’s County Council passed in June, prohibits most retailers from using disposable plastic bags and requires them to charge a fee of at least $0.10 for paper and reusable bags starting Jan. 1, 2024. The legislation aims to reduce plastic pollution in the county and incentivize shoppers to bring their own bags.
Prince George’s joins a growing number of DMV jurisdictions to adopt such a bag law, none of which include exemptions for food aid recipients.
Because of the way the federal programs are structured, SNAP/WIC recipients can’t use their benefits to pay for bags. Food justice group Maryland Hunger Solutions has pushed legislators in Prince George’s and Baltimore counties exempt shoppers using these benefits from the bag fee. Five states and many other jurisdictions nationally have included the exemption in similar legislation.
Some grocery stores, like ALDI, already charge for bags; Martha Ainsworth, a zero waste leader with the Prince George’s Sierra Club, said in her testimony that less than 10% of shoppers take disposable bags at such stores.
While the local Sierra Club chapter opposed the exemption bill, several other environmental organizations joined economic and food justice groups in support of it.
Activists and council members opposing the exemption amendment at the hearing said that anyone, regardless of income, can bring reusable bags. Many organizations offer bags for free. Council member Thomas Dernoga said that his office had been giving out bags for over a decade, but he realized he could not make sure bags got to all of Prince George’s County’s SNAP and WIC recipients, which number over 100,000.
“As I thought about the number of households that we have that are using SNAP and WIC, and thinking about the economic demographics, I been moved,” said Council member Thomas Dernoga at the hearing. “The hardest people to reach are the people who are the lowest incomes. I’m getting out lots of bags, but they’re not necessarily going to the people who need them most.”
Michael J. Wilson, director of Maryland Hunger Solutions, said that those arguing against the exemption showed a “lack of understanding” about the experience of poverty.
“There’s a lack of recognition that everybody doesn’t have bags in their car, because everybody doesn’t have a car,” Wilson said. “The bag is just the symptom. It’s the symptom of the poverty that people are feeling, that other folks don’t recognize. And they want to look away from it.”
Further, proponents argued that everyone forgets sometimes, but not all shoppers have to make hard choices because of a 10-cent fee. Wilson said Maryland Hunger Solutions plans to keep pushing for Prince George’s County and other Maryland jurisdictions to incorporate equity into their laws around carry-out bags.
“People are struggling in ways that are unbelievable, and we are nickel-and-diming poor people,” he said. “Nickel-and-diming middle-class people means nothing — because they’re not the ones who are saving their nickels and dimes for food.”
I been saving my plastic bags for years ever since we were not supposed to put them in with the trash. I use them as liners for my bathroom small trash cans and when dirty drop them off at grocery store recycling bins. I’m disabled and get a meager 900$ and change a month that pretty much goes towards a roof over my head and electric bill water bills etc. Lucky if I have 150$ left at end of the month and 1/3 of that goes towards gas to go to dr appointments and such. And 75$ goes towards my car insurance leaving me with a grand total of about 25-30$ a month. My food is gotten from my snap benefits which won’t cover a bag surcharge. So either they need to have reusable bags issued every couple months the free bags are junk and tear apart after few uses especially when have to beg to get 2 of them I don’t have money to out gas in the car to run around to all the locations that are giving out free bags. They either need to exempt snap recipients or have free bags that you return next visit and get different ones so that dont need to deal with them when they get more then 5 or 6 uses and that was before now that will have cram everything into whatever bags you bring they won’t last as long.
If nothing done I will put the 1k plus bags in bottom of my trash bags just to gum up the machinery at dump to cause state to spend 100x each time I have pay for a bag not that i won’t argue every time and hold up the lines if they want to charge me.
Why is there a fee for the paper bags.
Is that money in the stores pocket?
What if folks start using the trash bags they buy in the store, are they a danger to the environment, will the stores stop selling them. Then folks will just dump the trash into the trash cans and don’t use the trash bags. That will really clean up the environment.