Discarded plastic bags defy easy recycling efforts in Chittenden County — and members of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility have hatched a plan to tidy things up. A system of pick-up and collection designed by Burlington-based Waste Free Earthaims to keep more plastic bags out of landfills, waterways.
Details of the plan have yet to be ironed out, the release states, but VBSR members Burton Snowboards, Casella Waste Systems, Chittenden Solid Waste District, City Market, OnLogic and Ski Rack are participating in the plan. A statewide ban on grocery and shopping bags made of “film” plastic (typically labeled as #4 LDPE) has been in effect since July of last year.
Businesses and individuals still use and discard a lot of plastic bags, according to Waste Free Earth. Although prohibited from blue-bin recycling, many of the cast-offs end up there anyway, and tangle up sorting machinery at Chittenden Solid Waste District.