:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/PCRMF3MU2ZAPNJ2PASDBJ7F5TY.jpg)
Environmentalists along the Lynnhaven River and other local waterways are hard-pressed to find an osprey nest that does not contain bits of plastic. Along the Oceanfront, bags peek out from the sand. Animal rescuers find them in the bellies of marine creatures.
Plastic is so pernicious worldwide that it’s been found everywhere scientists have looked, from remote tropical islands to the deep waters of the Antarctic.
Virginians are estimated to go through about 3 billion single-use plastic bags each year, most used for minutes at a time. A new effort in Virginia Beach aims to chip away at the problem by making the bags less accessible and appealing.
The coalition, including nonprofit Lynnhaven River NOW and the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center, advocates charging shoppers 5 cents per plastic bag they get at local grocery stores, gas stations and pharmacies.
“We advertise ourselves as a pristine beach and estuarine environment,” said Jim Deppe, advocacy coordinator for Lynnhaven River NOW. “The truth of the matter is there are a lot of plastic bags in it, and we would like to get those out.”
The group is reaching out to local environmental and business organizations to discuss the issue. It plans to formally propose the fee before the Virginia Beach City Council in April. The city would be the first in Hampton Roads to adopt one, which advocates hope would build momentum for the rest of the region.
Virginia lawmakers granted localities the authority for a 5-cent disposable plastic bag tax in early 2020.
But the pandemic hit and the group did not want to attempt too much change or further burden retailers, said Karen Forget, executive director of the Lynnhaven group.
“We’ve just been kind of sitting on our hands waiting for the time that we thought was most appropriate to introduce it,” she said.
Meanwhile, other localities have enacted the fees in the past year, including Roanoke and several in Northern Virginia. Anecdotal evidence out of those areas and others out of state have shown significant impact, Deppe said. In Washington, for example, a fee was instituted a decade ago and the number of plastic bags found in the Anacostia River dropped by 75%.
“Don’t listen to the naysayers,” a spokesperson for the Anacostia Watershed Society told a New Jersey reporter when that state was considering a similar tax. “Your rivers are going to be cleaner.”
Virginia’s law stipulates that any money going to the locality from a fee must go to environmental cleanup and education programs or pay for reusable bags for recipients of public benefits like the Women, Infants and Children Program.
Deppe said in the first year it’s instituted, 2 cents would return to the vendor, with the remaining going to the city. In following years, 1 cent would go to the vendor and the rest to Virginia Beach.
The change would not affect paper bags or small local retailers such as clothing stores or restaurants. And people who opt into paying the 5-cent fee could still use plastic bags.
Plastic bags can be recycled at most grocery stores — but not in the traditional curbside stream. They gum up the works of recycling companies’ equipment. If you toss your recycling in a plastic bag, it’s likely the whole thing will be thrown in the trash.
[ The state of recycling in Virginia: It may not be going where you think ]
The bags also frustrate farmers by getting into fields and equipment, said Mark Swingle, director of conservation and research at the Virginia Aquarium.
Unlike some plastic items, the bags are easily blown by the wind and end up in trees and bushes, which Swingle said he witnesses on his daily commute.
Today's Top Stories
The aquarium has made fighting plastics pollution a priority for years. It’s part of a nationwide group of aquariums committed to reducing plastic use and helped push for a Virginia bill last year that now bans the release of balloons into the environment.
The marine stranding team has seen firsthand the damage plastics can have on ocean life, found annually in the digestive tracts of mammals and turtles.
A plastic bag floating in the ocean looks remarkably like a jellyfish, which turtles eat, Swingle said.
“The bottom line is we just use way too many of them and we don’t need to.”
The idea behind a fee is to educate people on the issue while encouraging a shift in behavior, Forget said.
“I’ve been doing this work for a long time and I’ve been encouraged by how adaptable people are, even when they think they aren’t,” she said. “A few weeks of using reusable bags and they won’t believe they ever brought 20 bags home.”
Katherine Hafner, 757-222-5208, katherine.hafner@pilotonline.com