Inside the Proposal for Mansfield’s Newest “Green” Initiative

September 19, 2018 by Caroline Calandro

Mansfield residents and officials are huddling up to do what they feel is their part to help save the environment.

According to the Ocean Conservancy, over eight million metric tons of plastics enter the world’s oceans annually in addition to the 150 metric tons that are currently already floating around.

Nationally this issue has regained attention as California recently enacted a state-wide plastic bag ban. Westport was the first town to do so ten years ago. Greenwich’s ban kicked off a wave of new towns in Connecticut now considering a ban as well, including Mansfield.

Following the town of Mansfield’s Zero Waste Resolution, two years ago the Solid Waste Advisory Committee began exploring the idea of a plastic bag ban.

According to Virginia Walton of the Solid Waste Advisory Committee, or SWAC, this ordinance is not the result of a fad but has rather been a heavily researched topic in the town.

“The Solid Waste Advisory Committee had looked at this ten years ago, actually, when Westport first started their bag ban,” she said. “At the time there was not consensus in the group to move forward on the project. It was probably a year and a half ago when it was brought up again because at this point Massachusetts has about 80 plastic bag bans so the work was done again.”

At an Ordinance Review subcommittee meeting Monday night, members of the public as well as members of SWAC met with town council members to perfect the language of the ordinance draft before it is presented to the town council next Monday. Walton explained the roots of their interest in pursuing the ordinance.

“One concern is the growing evidence of single-use plastic pollution – it’s ubiquitous and not going away,” Walton said. “Another issue is that our supplier, Willimantic Wastepaper, and the market for recyclables including plastics, is really teetering at this point. China has shut their doors to exports and most of our recyclables went to China, so there’s this issue with cleanliness with recyclables and plastic bags are the worst offender of what’s ending up mixed up in single stream recycling: cans, paper, cardboard.”

Kelly Rafferty, a UConn PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) student, shared her efforts at the review meeting to bring the heart of the legislation into effect on the UConn campus in some form.

“In addition to working with SWAC and with the Director of the Student Union at UConn. Last week we spoke about possibly phasing out plastic bags in the Student Union, and I explained the reasons why that is important and how SWAC has been working at the town level to make that happen,” she said. “Overall he was very supportive of that idea, he told me that it was great news the town was looking towards a bag ban and that was something UConn should follow, even if they are not directly included in the ordinance.”

Some ordinances passed by Mansfield have applied to the University of Connecticut in the past, however, the school does not have to be subject to local ordinances as they are a state organization.

Residents and council members do hope UConn will follow suit, as council member Ben Shaiken pointed out, “the biggest culprits of plastic bag users are usually college students who for whatever reason, perhaps lack of time or resources, do not bring reusable bags to places like Big Y and Price Chopper and leave with 15 bags.”

This being said, there do seem to be avenues for change within UConn. According to Rafferty, administrators at the Student Union have said that while it may take some time for the Student Union to switch over to paper, they just recently switched from plastic straws to paper straws.

Discussions ensued regarding the types of bags that SWAC planned to include in the ordinance draft. It was decided that the ordinance pertains to plastic checkout bags, not including dry cleaner bags, meat/produce bags or packaging. It was further resolved that residents would be able to choose their own alternative forms of checkout vessels.

Rather than taxing the use of plastic bags, the committee hopes to rid the town’s stores of plastic bags within the next six months. Businesses that do not comply will be subject to warnings and fines.