Introduction
Don’t Waste Durham, with support from the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic (ELPC), has been advocating for the City and County of Durham to pass an ordinance to reduce disposable bags through a fee. As currently drafted, retailers in Durham would be required to charge customers 10 cents for disposable bags – both paper and plastic – at the point of sale. The proposal is for the fee to go to the City’s Solid Waste Management Department to cover costs of the policy’s implementation, providing reusable bags to low-wealth residents, and other plastic reduction and reuse programs. Customers who rely on government assistance programs, such as SNAP, WIC, and Medicaid, would be exempt from paying the fee.
We want this fee to pass, because we are deeply concerned by the overwhelming negative economic and health impacts of single-use bags and the environmental damage they cause. All of these impacts are borne most of all by low-wealth communities of color. It's up to elected leaders to do the right thing for the people in our community, and for industry to stop making products that hurt people.
Over 400 cities in the U.S. have plastic bag regulations (bans, fees, or taxes) – many of them since the 1980s! Durham can do this too, and needs to do this too.
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Important links and information:
Our comprehensive report: “Cost of single-use plastic bags in Durham, North Carolina” (October 2021)
Celebrating success after an Environmental Affairs Board (EAB) meeting at City Hall in 2019.
Don’t Waste Durham meets regularly with its team of attorneys, scientists, and communications experts from the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic to work on moving this policy forward.
What has been accomplished so far:
The Environmental Affairs Board unanimously endorsed the proposal in August 2019. Since that time:
The City and County attorneys have agreed with our legal analysis that local governments have authority to adopt local ordinances to regulate single- use plastics via bans and fees.
Volunteers with Don’t Waste Durham continues to develop its Bull City Boomerang Bags program (est. 2019) to circulate reusable bags in the community. These free reusable bags are now available at Save A Lot (812 Liberty St.) and Kings Red and White (305 E. Club Blvd.)
We have continued to engage with businesses and community members to educate them on the proposal and receive feedback. We have surveyed 60 local businesses and met with community organizations such as the Durham InterNeighborhood Council and NCCU Climate Reality Campus Corps.
We have been coordinating with community organizations from other parts of the state that are interested in adopting ordinances to reduce plastic waste. The City of Asheville has tentatively endorsed a proposal to reduce plastic bags and polystyrene (e.g., Styrofoam) and is now conducting a community outreach effort. We have also been in contact with groups working on ordinances in Buncombe County, Wake County, Carteret County, New Hanover County, and Charlotte.
We presented the proposal to the Joint City County Committee in October 2021 and to City Council at the Work Session in February 2023. We have also met individually with every City Council member, except Anthony Middleton, and with Mayor O’Neal. During the City Council Work Session, Council formed a subcommittee to work with us to address remaining concerns about implementation and equity.
April 2023 updates
Don’t Waste Durham and Duke ELPC are working with the City’s Solid Waste Management Department and the subcommittee made up of three City Councilmembers (Leonardo Williams, Monique Holsey-Hyman, and Javiera Caballero) to fine-tune the proposal and its implementation. At our April 3, 2023 meeting with the Subcommittee, the Council Members expressed a strong desire for an education and outreach campaign to precede implementation of any plastic reduction ordinance.
In April 2023, we met with the City’s Solid Waste Management Department to understand implementation needs. The Department’s Interim Director does not foresee any major hurdles with implementation but does need additional staff. The department has requested two positions:
Public Information and Communication Analyst: This position would develop and coordinate waste reduction, reuse and recycling initiatives and campaigns that would address single-use items, among others, at a broad level. Education and outreach focused on the proposed bag fee would be a component of this position.
Code Enforcement Officer: The position was requested in the event the bag fee ordinance was adopted. Notably, it is requested as a five-year time-limited position, with the expectation that after five years, the campaign to eliminate single-use bags should have achieved its objective.
Securing these two positions in the upcoming City budget would be instrumental for the future success of plastic and waste reduction policies in Durham. The Solid Waste Management Department currently does not have a staff member dedicated to education and communications despite perpetual requests for a Public Information and Communication Analyst in past budgets. We see this position as vital for the education and outreach campaign that the subcommittee is desiring and for any waste reduction and reuse programs the Solid Waste Department may want to implement in the future. The Code Enforcement Officer would directly oversee the bag fee’s implementation and enforcement. Based on our research into other municipalities, one full time staff member is likely sufficient for successfully implementing a bag-fee policy.
Finally, while these positions will require upfront investment from the City, revenue from the bag fee is projected to more than offset their cost. For example, Fairfax County, VA, which has a population of 1.1 million (~3 times the population of Durham County), projects generating $1.2 million dollars in revenue in year one, even though the county retains only 3 cents per plastic bag in comparison to the 10 cents per bag that we propose. In Boulder, CO, (population: 108,000) the 6 cents per bag collected by the city generates about $250,000 in revenue each year.
⚖️ Don’t Waste Durham is the grateful client of the Duke Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. ⚖️
