Should Your Town Ban Plastic Bags?

• between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year
• these bags are used for an average of 12 minutes, but they remain in our landfills, oceans, parks and beaches for thousands of years

...it becomes hard not to think that maybe there's a better alternative.

It's exactly that environmental impact on an increasingly green-minded society that has been fueling a movement away from the all-too-convenient, all-mighty plastic bag.

Chances are you have at least one reusable bag — that you got for free at some festival or were guilted into purchasing at the checkout line. You know, the one(s) you forget to bring to the grocery store every week. 

In Comes the Plastic Bag Ban

Westport may be the only town in Connecticut to have banned plastic bans (in 2009), but it is not alone.

In New York, the City of Rye, Village of Mamaroneck, and Village of Larchmont have bans on disposable bags, and Hastings-on-Hudson, Ossining, and Pleasantville are looking to join their ranks.

Taking an even wider lens, plastic bag bans exist in varying forms in communities in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and California. Some places, like Boulder, Colo., have instituted a fee for the use of plastic bags (10 cents for each bag there).

Whether it's a fee or an outright ban coupled with an educational campaign, they are all after the same end result: making plastic bags a thing of the past.

Which takes us back to the beginning: would you like your town to ban plastic bags?