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Bag bylaw
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Proposed Westborough mandatory fee for bags rejected by attorney general
Bag bylaw | from page 1
Westborough’s original bag bylaw prohibited the use of thin-film, single-use plastic bags at grocery and retail stores. It promoted reusable bags, saying that, if a store provided checkout bags, they had to be reusable or recyclable paper bags.
The original bylaw said stores “may” charge for the bags, though it didn’t require such a charge, like the changed bylaw would have.
What was proposed
This was then one of two petitioned articles related to plastic that went before Town Meeting this spring.
Petitioned by Zero Waste Westborough, member Nathan Askew presented changes during Town Meeting.
The intent, he said, was to make consumers more aware of their bag use by making it less convenient to go into a retail store without a reusable bag.
The second article that was petitioned by Zero Waste Westborough addressed plastic reduction in general. It would require restaurants to use biodegradable materials for their dine-out containers when such an alternative exists.
That article was ultimately referred to the Board of Health, which will be holding an informational session on Tuesday, July 19 at 5 p.m. in the Westborough Fire Station meeting room.
Select Board, business community share thoughts
When this pair of articles was presented to the Select Board before Town Meeting, some members voiced concerns that this hadn’t been communicated to businesses.
Sean Keogh said he was generally supportive.
“These are things that we have to do,” Keogh said.
He added that he would be interested in following up and working with the community to bring this matter back to Westborough’s fall Town Meeting if it didn’t pass at Town Meeting in March.
In the weeks and months following Town Meeting approval, town staff had cautioned that the changes to the bag bylaw still needed to be approved by the attorney general.
Those messages came on multiple occasions, including at an informational session in May.
During that same meeting, residents and business owners spoke out against the bylaw changes, including Julio’s Liquors owner Ryan Maloney.
He said businesses have been at the “forefront” of dealing with verbal abuse stemming from mask mandates and COVID-19.
“We’re finally getting a little on the other side of this, and now my crew will have to explain to everybody that we have to charge you a $0.10 bag fee where we used to charge you nothing,” Maloney said.
Business owner celebrates AG’s move
Writing on Monday, Askew told the Community Advocate that he was “saddened” that the $0.10 charge wouldn’t be included in the implementation of the changes.
Askew said that bag fees have been successfully implemented in many other parts of the country and have begun to reduce waste, noting projections of increased plastic production. He welcomed community members to get involved to make Westborough more sustainable.
“Bag fees may not be the most popular, but the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that immediate and rapid culture change is what is needed to fight climate change,” Askew said.
Maloney, meanwhile, said he was “really happy” in a statement on Friday.
“We pretty much agree with everything else that was going on,” he said, adding that he wished proponents of this change had done more outreach to local business people before advancing these changes.
In the meantime, businesses were given an option to request six-month exemptions from recent bylaw changes to allow them extra time to get into compliance.
The Select Board did grant two such exemptions to Julio’s Liquors and Boston Ski + Tennis.
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