Montco Accounts For Most Of PA's Plastic Bag Bans: Where The Movement Stands

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PA — Environmental organizations continue to work with townships around Montgomery County to enact bans of single use plastics at the local level, as the area has proven to be a leader both regionally and nationwide.

With a lack of meaningful action at the federal and state level, these local bans are sometimes the only resort.

Of 21 municipalities in all of Pennsylvania that have issued some sort of plastics ban, nine of them are in Montgomery County.

“Plastic bags are the poster child for the environmental harm caused by single-use plastics," PennEnvironment’s Zero Waste Advocate Faran Savitz said in a statement following West Norriton's adoption earlier this year. "Nothing we use for a few minutes, such as single-use plastic bags, should be allowed to litter our communities, pollute our environment, and fill our landfills and incinerators for hundreds of years to come."

Narberth, Upper Merion, Ambler, Lower Merion, Springfield Township, West Norriton, Montgomery Township, Whitemarsh Township, and Upper Moreland have all issued bans. Several occurred within the past several months. Narberth was the trailblazer, becoming the first in the state to pass this type of ordinance in 2018.

Nearby, Radnor Township, West Chester, and Philadelphia have also issued bans.

Activists hope several more municipalities will join them soon.

Advocacy groups like PennEnvironment work directly with environmental action committees in individual townships where they've identified a will. Townships and experts work together to draft ordinances, which usually allow for a several month grace period before the ban is enacted. Officials work with model legislation that they say is culled from best practices learned in similar fights around the country.

In most cases, paper bags replace plastic, and reusable bags will be promoted. Advocates point to plastic bags clogging storm drains, worsening flooding, as well as other ecological harms.

Statewide legislation has been introduced, but has stalled. Some individual corporations with a heavy local footprint, like Wegmans, have taken action as well.

Support for these measures is not universal. There was pushback in the Narberth case from those who said it represented government overreach, and pointed to low costs. Meanwhile, ten states around the country have pre-emptively passed legislation that would prohibit a ban on plastics.