Cuyahoga County Council to ban plastic bags!

If California thinks it’s a good idea, I am probably against it. Here’s the report from Courtney Astolfi at Cleveland.com:

Cuyahoga County Council is poised to pass a countywide ban on single-use plastic bags after all the members of a council committee on Wednesday voiced support for the ban.

Four members of the Education, Environment, and Sustainability Committee signed on as co-sponsors of the ban during the Wednesday hearing, and Council President Dan Brady told cleveland.com he expects the measure to pass.

Committee Chairwoman Sunny Simon and Councilman Dale Miller are the primary sponsors. Signing on Wednesday were Brady, Council Vice President Pernel Jones Jr., and councilwomen Shontel Brown and Cheryl Stephens, giving the measure the six votes needed for passage.

A simple majority of the 11-member council is needed to pass legislation.

Contacted Wednesday, a spokeswoman for County Executive Armond Budish could not immediately say whether Budish supports the measure or whether he would sign the ordinance into law.

If signed into law, the ban would go into effect on Oct. 1 to give retailers time to use up their supplies of plastic bags, and allow time for community education.

The last time Council attempted to curtail the use of plastic bags was a 2017 proposal by Simon and Miller that would have added a 10-cent fee per plastic and paper bag. But that measure faced heavy pushback and never made it to out of committee.

Brady on Wednesday said he believed the proposed ban had garnered a “broad consensus.”

Jones and Stephens said they have received calls and emails in support of the ban from both urban and suburban residents of the county.

Simon acknowledged that the ban would be a difficult change for county residents. But she said it was a necessary one, and likened the environment in America to Paris’ fire-damaged cathedral of Notre Dame.

“This is our cathedral,” she said. “Teddy Roosevelt saw this as something as a legacy that we have to preserve. This is our future.” [hyperbole, anyone? -DP]

The ban applies to all single-use plastic bags and paper bags that are not 100 percent recyclable or made from at least 40 percent of recycled material.

The ban would not apply to plastic bags that customers bring with them to retailers, and bags used for carry-out orders of prepared food or restaurant leftovers.

It also would not apply to plastic bags used for newspapers, perishable items such as produce and meat, garbage, dry-cleaning, pet waste, prescription medication and bags provided at curbside pick-up or points of delivery and bags used for legally transporting partially-consumed bottles of wine.

Exclusions notwithstanding, what’s next? Plastic straws? (Rest of the report is here.)

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