Daily Herald opinion: More towns should find ways to eliminate single-use plastic bags

This editorial is the consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board

When you go to the grocery store, how many plastic bags do you carry home filled with food? Maybe five to 10 a week?

What happens to all those plastic bags? They can't be recycled in curbside bins, though people often mistakenly toss them in with other plastics.

So they litter the sides of highway exit ramps. Or they end up as deadly waste in landfills or the ocean, according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Birds, turtles and fish mistake these shredded bags for food, filling their stomachs with toxic debris. By 2050, it's estimated that there will be more plastic than fish in the sea.

What can we do about it? For one, we can say no thank you to single-use plastic bags when we shop. Towns like Batavia are a step closer to making that decision easier for all of us, as they consider a shopping bag fee in town.

If this proposed 10-cents-per-bag fee will deter people from using plastic bags and reduce the number of bags hurting our environment, we are all for it and hope other towns follow suit.

St. Charles has also discussed this fee, and other Illinois towns already charge for bags, including Woodstock, Evanston, Oak Park, Edwardsville and Chicago, according to the Kane County Chronicle.

Since the fee went into effect, Oak Park has seen "a significant reduction in the number of bags that were sent out," said Loren Nagy, chair of the St. Charles Natural Resources Commission.

And who benefits from the bag fees? In St. Charles, 40% would be retained by the retailer and 50% would be retained by the city, with the remaining 10% going to Kane County's Division of Environmental and Water Resources, Nagy said.

Yes, making reusable bags a part of your shopping routine is one more thing to have to remember. But it's a habit worth creating for the greater good. And you might find you enjoy the reusable bags - they are easier to pack and carry, washable, sturdy and handy for a variety of tasks.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, each reusable bag can eliminate hundreds to thousands of single-use plastic bags that can end up in lakes and oceans, harming aquatic life.

Bag fee ordinances like the one Batavia proposes are likely to be the rule rather than the exception as cities and states focus on eliminating plastic waste and improving our environment. So far, eight states - California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon and Vermont - have banned single-use plastic bags, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

We encourage Batavia and other towns to implement these bag fees. And we encourage you not to pay them. Instead, reject plastic shopping bags altogether and make reusable bags a part of your life. Gift them to yourself and others, and offer a gift to the environment in the process.