Salisbury bans single-use plastic bags

Salisbury, Maryland just passed a ban on single use plastic bags.

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Salisbury, Maryland just passed a ban on single-use plastic bags. The ban on plastic bags and the 10 cent fee for each paper or reusable bag provided goes into effect on July 1, 2023.

Plastic bag disposal is a lose, lose, lose. They jam up recycling machinery, and every plastic bag we throw away ends up burned in an incinerator and polluting our air or buried in a landfill polluting our water. If they get loose, they end up littering our neighborhoods, roads, the Chesapeake Bay and the shore.

Plastic bag litter wreaks havoc on our quality of life and the environment. When plastic bags enter the water system, they don’t biodegrade like paper, food or other organic materials. Rather, they’ll remain intact or break down into  microplastics, creating a toxic plastic “soup” that’s easily ingested by marine life. Plastic fragments have been found ingested by literally hundreds of different species, including 86% of all sea turtle species, and nearly half of all seabird and marine mammal species.

We all know the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Cheers to Salisbury for reducing plastic waste by keeping single use plastic bags out or circulation.

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