As South Carolina bans grow, bag makers seek help

South Carolina lawmakers are considering taking away the ability of local governments to ban or tax bags and other single-use plastics. But mayors from some of the state's largest cities and coastal towns are pushing back strongly.

In a debate that's being echoed in state legislatures around the country, leaders from Charleston and other cities are protesting the move to shift power over single-use plastics away from them.

They came to a legislative hearing recently to argue that their local bag and foam polystyrene bans are popular, and that they protect both the environment and key industries like tourism and seafood.

But the plastics bag industry said decisions about single-use plastic belong with state lawmakers, instead of a patchwork of different rules city-by-city, and urged state officials to push ahead.

The American Progressive Bag Alliance argued that the state needs to rein in local ordinances that it said are some of the most restrictive in the country and have turned coastal parts of South Carolina into a hotbed of debate on single-use plastics.

South Carolina's conversation mirrors that in other legislatures — 11 states currently have laws preventing local government restrictions on plastics. Five more, including Oklahoma and North Dakota, are considering it, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

APBA, which represents the plastic bag industry, argued in a March 20 state Senate hearing that bags are a very small part of the state's litter and municipal waste — less than 1 percent — and that bans, while they may be well intentioned, would not make a dent in overall litter.

APBA said smarter policies should focus on boosting recycling, like in-store plastic bag and film recycling programs. And it suggested that state officials are more likely to make better, more scientific decisions around waste policy.

"Any of these policies should be fact-based, science-based, rather than emotion driven," said Matt Seaholm, executive director of Washington-based APBA. "That's unfortunately often what we see, especially at a local level."

Will Haynie, mayor of Mount Pleasant, S.C., took issue with that. He told state senators that local governments have looked at the science and gotten extensive public input, and state legislators should respect that.

"We wanted to be here not to debate the thickness of plastics bags, but to ask you to respect our right to govern and to represent our 87,000 citizens the way you represent your districts in the state of South Carolina," said Haynie, who noted that his town is the fourth-largest city in the state.

"We have done the science, we have heard from our fisherman and our shrimping fleet, that plastic litter is a problem," he said, calling it a competitiveness issue for the seafood industry. "If we don't have the reputation of having the purest, cleanest seafood out of the waters of South Carolina, it does not bode well for an industry that is very near and dear to our hearts."

South Carolina's coastal communities have become a hub of debate around single-use plastics.

Seaholm said 19 local governments in the state have either passed or are considering single-use plastics restrictions, and some of them have "incredibly broad" language that make them some of the strictest in the United States.

"The Charleston and Mount Pleasant ordinances are the two farthest reaching ordinances that we've seen across the country," Seaholm said. "That includes all of the 147 that were passed in California before they enacted a statewide ban."

Besides plastic bags, some of them ban or restrict expanded and extruded PS disposable packaging or require that all disposable food service products be recyclable.

Seaholm said traditional thin plastic bags can have a lower carbon footprint and be a better environmental choice than thicker reusable bags, telling lawmakers that reusable woven polypropylene bags sold in South Carolina grocery stores need to be reused about 60 times to be equal to one reuse of a traditional thin plastic bag.

A Clemson University study showed that more than 80 percent of the public won't reuse them that much, he said.

"There's no doubt about it, the traditional thin-gauge plastic bag is the best option at the checkout, as long as its disposed of properly," he said. "And that's an important note."

But for the mayors, it was what they characterized as long struggles with waste and litter pollution that drew their concern.

Tim Goodwin, mayor of the small oceanside community of Folly Beach, said his town's ban on plastic bags and EPS containers has reduced beach litter by at least 50 percent.

"This bill we're talking about today is a ... specific bill to protect one industry in South Carolina — plastics," he said. "Our ban in Folly Beach was put in place, hand in hand, because our business association realized we had a problem that we'd been working on for years and years and years, and that's litter on the beach and litter on the roadways and litter in the rivers and creeks."

He said the state gave cities broad powers under home rule provisions in 1975 so they had resources to solve their own problems. Folly Beach passed the state's first bag ban in 2016.

"If you're going to go back to micromanaging municipalities and counties, the state needs to come up with two things — money for physical obligations and manpower to help us clean up," Goodwin said.

Haynie said officials in Mount Pleasant have worked with local grocers and retailers to address concerns. He argued local laws allow for better solutions.

"We're not telling other municipalities around the state to regulate plastic bags," he said. "We're surrounded on three sides by salt water marsh. We have 12 million plastic bags distributed a year in the town, single use, in the town of Mount Pleasant, and with all the construction going on, those bags were ending up in our marshes and in our waterways."

Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg said the bag ban his city passed had overwhelming support among residents, and said it was important for tourism and the environment.

He also pointed to a study done by graduate students at The Citadel, the state-supported military college in Charleston, and said he was bothered that the research "found microplastics in the oysters I love to eat."

"I beseech you to not disallow our ban," Tecklenburg said. "It's very important for our community, for our tourism, for our environment, for this ordinance to proceed."