SOURCE:
By Ken Dixon - July 16, 2021
A group of more than 20 environmental groups claims that giant retailer Walmart is dodging the spirit of Connecticut’s new ban on plastic shopping bags by offering slightly thicker bags at cash registers in most of its 33 state locations.
“This is a blatant work-around to the statewide plastic bag ban that went into effect on July 1,” said Louis Rosado Burch, state program director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, in a letter to Doug McMillon, Walmart CEO. “Single-use plastic bags are a wasteful, unnecessary habit, they are detrimental to our environment, present a hazard to human health and cost taxpayers money. For these reasons, CCE supports policies that reduce our dependence on single-use plastics and promote the use of safer, more environmentally friendly reusable bags.”
Walmart’s 4.0-mil thick bags are labeled as reusable for as many as 125 times and recyclable at Walmarts if they are washed out and dried. A state law that went into effect July 1 prohibits plastic bags under 4-mil in thickness.
The company has pivoted to the thicker bags in other states including South Carolina and Colorado, after prohibitions on single-use bags were enacted. Consumers are not being charged for the bags.
A spokesman for Walmart, based in Arkansas, declined to comment directly on Friday, other than to say the company always follows state and local regulations. Last year, the company reported $138.3 billion in earnings.
Burch, in a phone interview, said that in Connecticut communities such as Hamden, with bans on plastic bags of 10 mils or less, Walmart is not using the 4-mil bags. “We see this move as rather disingenuous from a company that calls itself zero-waste, and puts out statements on how the business community should do its part and discourage single-use bags,” Burch said.
“It’s a legitimate concern that we raised two years ago,” said Chris Phelps, state director of Environment Connecticut, noting that the 4-mil thickness cutoff became an opportunity for some retailers to continue using plastic. “Yes, they are more reusable than thinner bags, but the point of banning plastic bags in the first place was to reduce plastic waste. Thicker bags do not bring us toward that goal.”
Phelps said that two years ago, at the time the General Assembly was approving the law, state lawmakers should have continued the 10-cent fee for thicker bags, but didn’t. The 2019 law exempted plastic bags provided for meat, seafood, loose produce, or unwrapped food items, as well as newspaper bags and those for laundry and dry cleaning.
The 10-cent plastic bag fee went into effect on August 1, 2019, and as part of that law, the ban on single-use bags beginning July 1, 2021 was included.
During the 2019-2020 fiscal year, the Department of Revenue Services reported Friday that the 10-cent fee per-bag netted the state $4.43 million. It had been estimated to bring in $44.3 million. From March 26 through June 30, 2020, the bag fee was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic, under executive order from Gov. Ned Lamont.
Jim Polites, spokesman for the DRS, said Friday that the lower-than-expected bag revenue was an indication that many consumers brought their own bags for shopping.
“On July 1, when the fee sunset, DRS focused on retailers and taxpayers and making them aware of the change, including that retailers were no longer required to collect the fee,” Polites said in a phone interview. “The behavior changed quickly once the fee started, in 2019.”
In recent years, plastic bags have become less common as litter along streams, highways and shorelines in Connecticut.
Wayne Pesce, president of the Connecticut Food Association, with a membership including 250 food stores and 35 different retailers, said Friday that the 2019 law eliminated as many as 700 million bags a year from Connecticut’s waste stream.
“Our members report that 90 percent of their customers bring their own bags,” Pesce said. “It’s a good law that has made a difference. I can understand how some say Walmart isn’t observing the spirit of the law. I am not sure how that decision was made internally. A lot of bags have been removed from the environment and our state is in a better place because of the law.”
The letter to Walmart was signed by representatives of groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Clean Water Action, the Connecticut River Conservancy, the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice, the Connecticut League of Conservation Voters, Environment and Human Health, Inc. and the Surfrider Foundation.
Burch said that put into single-stream recycling cans, plastic bags can literally seize-up sorting machines, requiring employees to lose time while they razor away the accumulated plastic.
“While it may seem innocuous to criticize Walmart, it threatens to undo the progress we’ve made in educating the public,” Burch said. “We’re just saying to be a good neighbor, honor the policy, and put your money where your mouth is and be a leader in the business community. It’s a culture change that we’re looking to promote here.”