Holden voters will have the opportunity at the town meeting on May 15 to pass an ordinance to ban single- use plastic bags in local retail and grocery stores. These are the polyethylene bags that you get at checkout counters. Only 15 to 25 percent of the materials that make up these bags can be recycled; the remainder either clog up recycling centers, are incinerated into the atmosphere, or become litter. Many drift into waterways, harming fish and other marine life.<\/p>\n
If this bill passes, Holden will become the 155th municipality in Massachusetts to enact such a ban; these cities and towns cover more than two-thirds of the state\u2019s population. This includes our neighboring communities of Worcester, Auburn, Grafton, Shrewsbury and West Boylston. Ten states have banned these bags statewide, including our neighbors in Connecticut, Maine, New York and Vermont.<\/p>\n
The largest retailer in Holden, Big Y, eliminated single-use plastic bags from all of its stores as of Aug. 1, 2019. In the article that appeared in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette on that day, Big Y\u2019s director of sales and merchandising stated that they were \u201cdoing it for the environment. We believe Connecticut and Massachusetts will do it as a state eventually, but we wanted to be in the forefront of this and be a leader and show that it\u2019s the right thing to do for the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The proposed ban will not eliminate all plastic bags. As stated in the bill, \u201cthin-film plastic bags used to contain dry cleaning, prescription medications, newspapers, produce, meat, bulk foods, wet items and other similar merchandise, typically without handles, are still permissible.\u201d These are thinner, recyclable bags.<\/p>\n
Today, if you get a bag at the checkout counter of a pharmacy or hardware store in Holden, it will state on the bag that only a portion (usually 10 to 25 percent) can be recycled. We can do better than that! Let\u2019s join our neighbors in using reusable bags and saving our environment.<\/p>\n
Vote for the Plastic Bag Ban at the Holden town meeting.<\/p>\n
\n Michael Mazloff<\/b>\n <\/p>\n
Holden<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Holden voters will have the opportunity at the town meeting on May 15 to pass an ordinance to ban single- use plastic bags in local retail and grocery stores. These are the polyethylene bags that you get at checkout counters. Only 15 to 25 percent of the materials that make up these bags can be recycled; the remainder either clog up recycling centers, are incinerated into the atmosphere, or become litter. Many drift into waterways, harming fish and other marine life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":96545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devcherryroad.com\/news2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}