City officials pass new law effectively banning all single-use plastic bags at stores: 'This is a big win'

The second-largest city in western Massachusetts passed a new law banning stores from providing single-use plastic bags, the Reminder reported.

Chicopee, a city of around 55,000 residents, will have its plastic bag ban go into effect on June 1, 2025. After that, any business that gives a customer a single-use plastic bag will be subject to first a warning, then a $50 fine, and then a $100 fine for all subsequent offenses.

"This is a big win for the city in my opinion," said Ward 6 city councilor Samuel Shumsky. "I know that recently we've been talking a lot of litter and trash in the city and truthfully, I proposed this with the co-sponsors President Laflamme, councilor Balakier and Vice President Zygarowski as a means to try and help mitigate the situations that were prevalent in my area of Chicopee because of where the Chicopee marketplace is."

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"I truthfully think this is a great initiative to help clean the city up," Shumsky concluded.

Plastic pollution is a big problem for our planet and is significantly exacerbated by single-use bags, which are too soft to be recyclable. Instead, most plastic bags end up clogging landfills, where they never really decompose but shed microplastics that have proliferated every inch of our planet. Many also end up in nature and the oceans, where they can ensnare and kill wildlife.

Other municipalities that have banned single-use plastic bags have managed to bring their pollution outputs way down at minimal inconvenience to residents. While people often oppose these bag bans before they happen, the data shows that they overwhelmingly embrace reusable bags once the bans go into effect.

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"I know that it's for retail only but it's the start of something positive for the city and maybe modified behavior of people when they see that there's more litter being picked up and that it has now become a trash free city. This is the step in the right direction," Ward 9 city councilor Mary Beth Pniak-Costello told the Reminder.