Plastic litter, from bottles to bags, is everywhere. Local environmental nonprofit MountainTrue has been documenting that fact for years, and is renewing its push to get single-use plastic bags banned from Asheville. “A third of microplastics we’re seeing in the French Broad watershed is coming from these plastics that we might use for 12 minutes and end up throwing away. So anything we can do to curb the input of that into our daily lives the better,” says Anna Alsobrook, watershed science and policy manager for MountainTrue.
The nonprofit is advocating for a full ban on single-use plastic bags given at point-of-sale and polystyrene foam to-go boxes, with an additional 10-cent fee on the use of replacement paper bags. They argue this would have the largest environmental benefit while only costing consumers a bit more than $3 annually on average in paper bag fees.
Customers using EBT, SNAP and WIC would be exempt from any fees under the proposal. If passed, it would be the first time any city or county in North Carolina took action on plastic bags, although the General Assembly instituted a ban for the Outer Banks that was later repealed, and Durham is currently considering regulation. Many cities and counties around the country, including several in South Carolina, have instituted bans or fees.