ORDER-2018-10 : Presentation by the Recycling Committee regarding their recent review of programs and initiatives.

Transcript (~57 min @ 13:47)

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▶ 13:59 Speaker 1: presentation by the recycling committee regarding their recent review of

▶ 14:07 Speaker 3: programs and initiatives Thank You mr. president I make a motion for immediate consideration of this order Alderman's work Oh asks for immediate consideration of the order is their objection to immediate consideration

▶ 14:20 Speaker 3: there is not Thank You mr. president we have the recycling members of the recycling committee here this evening who are going to present before us I would like to make a motion to suspend the rules in order to have them come before us moves to suspend the rules so that we can hear a presentation relative to this order the motion is seconded by alderman Mortimer all those in favor of the motion please indicate by saying aye aye anyone opposed motion passes the rules are suspended if you folks want to come forward to the center of the room and commence your presentation you're welcome ready when you are Thank You mr.

▶ 15:09 Speaker 5: president Board of Aldermen for letting us come here tonight my name is Jim Wilson and I along with George Stubbs are co-chairs of the Melrose recycling committee and we tonight would like to talk first of all I'd like to present a few things about the recycling committee to let people know more about what what we're doing in Melrose and then secondly I'm going to turn over the program to Gina McNeil who's going to talk about the to bring your own bag program and resolution that we would like to have the Board of Aldermen considering and and we want to talk about it tonight we we are a committee that was formed about 25 years ago initially to start getting Melrose interested in recycling and since then the committee has changed many times but right now we're a group of about 15 individuals Melrose residents who are really working in concert with DPW and in particular with Sadie Brown the Melrose coordinator of solid waste and recycling and we're we're really working with them trying to reduce cost trying to improve recycling within the city and to do so we do most of our work through three subcommittees we we have a subcommittee to reduce reuse and recycle this head but headed by Robin Snyder Drummond the second committee is this bring your own bag and also dealing with plastic subcommittee headed by Gina McNeil and then a communications sub team that deals with all our communication issues led by George Stubbs we if I could have the

▶ 17:02 Speaker 5: next slide I wanted to say just a few words about the reduce reuse and recycle subcommittee because Gina is going to talk about the BYOB subcommittee our goal is really to assist DPW in this subcommittee to reduce costs to reduce cost of solid waste through better use of recycling encouraging residents to reuse products more and to make them more available to other people for reuse as well as to just overall increase recycling rate and reduce the amount of trash that they generate we do this in in three basic ways we work on an active program to educate residents about recycling reuse and reduction of the amount of trash we've we've had for the last two years a summer lecture series last year we did a series on composting this year we're doing a series on plastics and all about plastics and and reuse of plastic materials the the committee also is very active in writing articles to the newspaper and blogs we have a very active website including a recyclopedia where we try to make information available to residents as to better ways to recycle just about anything that you could imagine needs to be recycled and we've produced a couple of videos they're being shown on mm TV as well as they're available on YouTube and generally used to try to encourage people to recycle more if I could have the next slide please this next slides perhaps a little bit redundant so I'll just blow through it I think in addition we we have information booths at the various events in town like the Victorian Fair and the healthy Melrose Fair we were very active in trying to reduce waste we have coming up in September 29th a swap day this is our fourth annual swap day where we make available space behind City Hall for residents to bring items that they they want to get rid of and there's never any money charge for this and residents can come and pick up items for no cost and it's really a great way to to recycle materials and it's always a lot of fun as well we we are actively involved with the DPW group on their Saturday events such as hazardous waste day and sell of bins and rain barrels and and overall on the Saturday collection days we're also if I could have the next slide I wanted to highlight one of the one of the things that we've been happy with is that we we were in 2013 starting with the the solid waste and recycling coordinator a survey of the town's recycling and trash rates at which residents are setting out recycling materials and we we drove around behind the trucks and we recorded the amount of trash and recycling materials and and generated the statistics in order to be able to determine accurately what kind of recycle rates we have in this in the city and we found in 2013 that residents on an on an average were recycling about 69% of the residents and after we went to single stream recycling the recycle rate did go up to about 76% and this kind of survey is really useful to DPW because it's it's helping them have better statistics that enables them to better manage their program and make better decisions about recycling and about trash pickup if I could have the next slide the this is just highlighting the swap day it's coming up again the 29th of September and it's it's really a pretty happy event and it's really endearing to see some of the people who are able to get some items that really can't afford it and lastly the next slide we we are promoting zero waste we we go to things like healthy Melrose and on the next slide as well we've we've gone this year to the Melrose run for women where we are we are trying to encourage groups that have events in the town to go to zero waste and not all of them are doing that in fact not all of them even have recycling so that's an issue that we're trying to make them aware of and educate them and the next slide at this point I'm going to turn over the presentation to Gina McNeil who's going to talk about the BYO bag

▶ 21:57 Speaker 6: bring your own bag initiative thank you as Jim mentioned Gina McNeil and I am one of the folks leading the bring your own bag initiative on the recycling

▶ 22:05 Speaker 7: committee so I want to talk tonight a little bit about what the bring your own

▶ 22:11 Speaker 7: bag initiative is why it's important and why specifically we're here to talk to

▶ 22:14 Speaker 8: you today just a brief kind of bit of explanation about what bring your own

▶ 22:19 Speaker 7: bag initiative is all about our goal really is to get the community to switch

▶ 22:26 Speaker 7: from using single-use shopping bags, whether they're plastic or paper, and instead to use

▶ 22:29 Speaker 8: reusable bags, so bring your own bag.

▶ 22:32 Speaker 6: So next slide, please.

▶ 22:34 Speaker 7: Why is this important? First of all, one of the themes you're going to notice in our presentation is that I'm really focusing a lot on plastic bags.

▶ 22:43 Speaker 8: I'll explain why in a moment.

▶ 22:45 Speaker 6: So plastic bags, one of the first things that people notice about them as a problem is that

▶ 22:52 Speaker 6: contribute to litter in the city but it turns out the problem is actually much larger than that next slide please to give a sense of the magnitude of the problem with plastic bags I'd like you to consider that every year in Melrose

▶ 23:08 Speaker 6: we use 9 million plastic bags 9 million plastic bags just here in Melrose every

▶ 23:16 Speaker 6: year next slide please next slide I'll go a little bit quickly in some places just to get through some of the content if you're curious about how we would get to this really enormous number in plastic bags here's the math behind it and the sources for the data that we have the other number I want you to look at here is on the lower right where we have 8.6 million of these bags that are

▶ 23:39 Speaker 7: not recycled so the large majority of bags that get used plastic bags are not

▶ 23:42 Speaker 6: recycled they end up as litter they end up in the incinerator they end up

▶ 23:51 Speaker 6: polluting waterways harming wildlife etc so I hope this gives you a sense of some

▶ 23:53 Speaker 7: of the magnitude of the problem that we're looking at when we're dealing with

▶ 23:56 Speaker 6: plastic bags the next couple of pages I'm going to go through pretty quickly

▶ 24:02 Speaker 7: because if there are questions about some of the implications of plastic bags

▶ 24:07 Speaker 6: I can circle back to this later but just in the interest of time we think about

▶ 24:10 Speaker 7: next slide please some of the negative impacts of plastic

▶ 24:16 Speaker 7: bags. We're all familiar with fossil fuels and using fossil fuels and the importance of reducing the extent to which we're relying on nonrenewable resources. Of course, plastic

▶ 24:28 Speaker 6: bags are made of fossil fuels. Next slide, please. Plastic bags are part of the growing

▶ 24:34 Speaker 7: and very significant problem of plastic pollution. These unfortunate images are just some examples of marine life, birds, marine mammals, fish, et cetera, that are found every year entangled

▶ 24:45 Speaker 6: or killed by plastic waste, including plastic bags. Next slide, please.

▶ 24:51 Speaker 6: And all of this plastic waste eventually gets into the ocean and becomes microplastics.

▶ 24:56 Speaker 6: And actually the next slide, the human health, eventually when these microplastics break

▶ 25:06 Speaker 6: down they're becoming part of the human food chain because they're being consumed by fish and we're

▶ 25:09 Speaker 7: consuming those fish species and there are some serious health risks associated with consuming

▶ 25:15 Speaker 6: plastic so really we see that this challenge and that the ramifications of plastic bags come full

▶ 25:24 Speaker 6: circle from being just a maybe an annoying litter problem to something that's actually quite serious

▶ 25:30 Speaker 6: so we're the recycling committee so our natural inclination is to say can we fix this with recycling what if we just did a really good job and got people to recycle these bags at a greater rate it turns out that that's really really really difficult to

▶ 25:44 Speaker 6: do so basically no one is recycling these bags now i know there's a few folks here that we've maybe talked to and gotten you on board but

▶ 25:53 Speaker 7: unfortunately that's very much the exception rather than the rule and the level of effort and communication investment and education

▶ 25:58 Speaker 6: it would take to make that behavior change is really enormous and frankly

▶ 26:05 Speaker 6: not realistic secondly next slide please the um not only are plastic bags themselves not being recycled they're actually causing really significant problems to single stream recycling

▶ 26:17 Speaker 6: here in melrose and nationally so what happens is people take their plastic bag and they see it has a nice recycling symbol on it and they think great i can put that in my curbside bin because we have single stream we can recycle anything in that bin that is not true when you when all of this waste gets collected up and goes to jrm for sorting they put it through these in all sorts of machines and

▶ 26:40 Speaker 6: sorters and literally plastic bags gum up the works and at least once a day jrm has to shut down the plant and cut all this stuff out in order to continue to actually process the normal recyclable materials this isn't an issue that's specific to jrm it's actually one of the biggest

▶ 26:57 Speaker 7: challenges to the recycling industry in the entire country so we've come to the conclusion

▶ 27:02 Speaker 6: that recycling is not the answer and plastic bags are actually increasing recycling costs for all of us so recycling is not the answer what can we do next slide please we can use our laws to protect our health and to protect our environment here in massachusetts 55 other cities and towns have taken action to do just that if we look nationally and even internationally this is part of a growing

▶ 27:33 Speaker 6: trend major cities here in the u.s the entire state of california entire countries like china and ireland have all taken steps to ban plastic bags next slide please this is a list of the

▶ 27:43 Speaker 6: cities and towns just here in Massachusetts that have passed these laws and a handful that have new laws proposed currently what I'd like to

▶ 27:53 Speaker 6: point out about this list is how comprehensive it is in terms of the kinds of communities that are represented this isn't just small towns it's not just wealthy towns it's not just really liberal environmental kind of towns it's really all kinds of towns cities and towns here in Massachusetts we've highlighted a couple of the examples of ones that we think in one way or the other are somewhat analogous have something in common with Melrose

▶ 28:21 Speaker 6: either proximity to us or characteristics of the community and here just to the north our neighbors and Wakefield's I have a plastic bag bylaw I

▶ 28:30 Speaker 6: believe it's called their proposed it was on their agenda for the town meeting in the spring and I believe it's coming back up for consideration in the fall so

▶ 28:39 Speaker 6: this is really something that there's a lot of activity and a lot of momentum behind next slide please so with all this activity one of the natural questions to ask and we've asked it is do these work what are some of the

▶ 28:55 Speaker 6: reactions to bag ordinances I think the momentum behind this we have 13 new laws passed in Massachusetts just in 2017 so cities and towns are looking at other

▶ 29:02 Speaker 6: communities that have done this and saying wow that's working it's a pretty good solution let's do that here there have been there are cities and towns like brooklines who've

▶ 29:13 Speaker 7: had this law in place for a number of years not only have they kept it because it works they've

▶ 29:19 Speaker 7: actually expanded it to include polystyrene and really strengthened this effort in their community

▶ 29:22 Speaker 6: and i have a couple of data points here from newburyport right here on the north shore talking about how members of the community and especially the business community have embraced

▶ 29:33 Speaker 6: the ordinance and the time that it's been in place in the last two and a half years

▶ 29:39 Speaker 6: next slide please but all that experience from other communities around the state is very helpful

▶ 29:46 Speaker 7: and we can learn from it but the bottom line is that we need an ordinance that's right for our community here in melrose we want to learn from residents we want to learn from businesses

▶ 29:51 Speaker 6: we want input from you obviously to understand what is an ordinance that's really going to work

▶ 30:02 Speaker 6: well for our community that said I can talk to what is typically included in a

▶ 30:08 Speaker 6: plastic bag ordinance some of the key characteristics are that one it's really focusing on prohibiting a specific kind of plastic bag it's the handled grocery

▶ 30:16 Speaker 7: bag that you're getting at the point of sale when you purchase something in a store so that's a key points secondly reusable bags are really the focus we

▶ 30:27 Speaker 7: call it the bring your own bag initiative for a reason because the goal isn't to switch from plastic to paper it's to switch from single use to a

▶ 30:38 Speaker 7: bring your own bag kind of scenario paper bags are still available in most towns that pass these ordinances sometimes it's for a fee sometimes it's at no charge but paper is still available as an alternative and next

▶ 30:51 Speaker 6: slide there are still other kinds of plastic bags that are available so when we think about our shopping experience many times plastic bags are used as

▶ 31:00 Speaker 6: packaging for the items that we're buying so newspaper bags produce bags etc that you can see here all of these kind of bags that are used as food

▶ 31:09 Speaker 7: packaging or merchandise packaging are still available it's really that handled grocery bag that's the focus a common question that we get as we're out in the

▶ 31:22 Speaker 6: community talking to people about this initiative is you know I do use some of

▶ 31:28 Speaker 7: my single-use grocery bags maybe there are two uses but the people will use them for pet waste or garbage can liners and what we find I think a lot of this on the recycling committee is gone to have gone through this in our own households as you stop using plastic bags you pretty quickly find that there are other things around the household that can be used for these kinds of purposes so lots of stuff you know for better words lots of stuff does come packaged in plastic and you have that there it's free you already have it in your home and it can be readily repurposed for these kinds of needs

▶ 32:00 Speaker 7: around the household again the goal of this where the bring your own bag initiative the whole purpose of this is to switch from season single use to reusable bags a couple points about that one is that people find and i think we've on the committee have found this ourselves and when we talk to folks in the community they tell us this as well that reusable bags are just better bags they don't break they hold a lot more stuff they fit nicely in your car they're just a good solution in general aside from the environmental um and the waste reduction benefits that they serve and the second point is they're readily available so if you go in and they're not only readily available they're readily available at an affordable cost most stores our grocery stores still in here in town will sell these bags for 99 cents sometimes less and it's also very common to be able to get these bags actually at no charge if you go to events here in melrose like healthy Melrose or Victorian Fair or many of these kinds of events, these bags are given away

▶ 33:04 Speaker 6: for free and also businesses will give them away as promotions often too.

▶ 33:07 Speaker 7: So there's a lot of not only very affordable ones to be purchased but ones that are available at no charge as well. Next slide.

▶ 33:19 Speaker 7: As we think about the idea of developing an ordinance that would work for Melrose, there are a handful of considerations well they're a range of considerations some of the key ones that we wanted to speak about tonight includes the ramp up period so always in these ordinances when they're passed there's a period of time between when the ordinance is passed to when it is actually implemented we believe that's really important in order to give the community consumers businesses everyone ready get to time to get ready to actually understand what this means and how it would impact them along those lines educational outreach is very important we've been doing that I'll talk more about that in a moment but clearly once an ordinance were to be passed there needs to be educational outreach very specifically to educate people on the contents and implications of that ordinance enforcement is a really important component of an ordinance as well it's typically done by the Board of Health but not always so that's something that would need to be decided here in the city of Melrose and And lastly, and very importantly, it's really critical, it's something that we take very seriously about ensuring that everyone in the community has access to reusable bags, especially our most vulnerable community members. This is something that we've actually been working on already this year.

▶ 34:35 Speaker 7: My colleague Trudy McDonald has done presentations at every single one of the senior housing complexes in the city and either talked about our initiative and or shown the documentary film Baggots. and along with that she's distributed reusable bags we got a donation of a thousand reusable bags from Melrose Bank and we've distributed that almost all of

▶ 34:56 Speaker 7: those along with some other bright orange recycling committee bags that that we had as well so making sure everyone has a bag is a key part of this initiative next slide please one of the things that's great about not being

▶ 35:08 Speaker 7: first or even close to first on this kind of initiative is we have a lot of resources to draw on we have all these other cities and towns where we can contact people there directly we can see what's worked and what's not worked so well in terms of the specifics of their ordinances and we can learn from that we

▶ 35:30 Speaker 7: also have alderman Frank Wright is the tree no city solicitor and in Somerville that they've had a bag ban in place for about a year and a half now so again there's a lot of resources statewide and even just locally that we can draw on so we're not at all going it alone as we travel down this path and then the last

▶ 35:49 Speaker 7: point that I want to leave you with is in terms of the outreach that we've done this is a summary of what we've been up to really since the beginning of 2017 in terms of outreach and really getting out there and talking to people about their their habits and why bringing your own bag is so important and I think one of One of the things that's been most encouraging and heartening to us is how supportive, by and large, people are of it. It's really pretty rare that we talk to people who say, you know, I love my plastic bags and I will never, ever give them up. Most people say plastic bags are terrible, I don't like the way I have to get three of them to carry a bottle of soda home because it breaks apart. Many people are aware of the plastic pollution issues that we talked about. And if anything, if I have questions, you know, if the topic of an ordinance comes up, they have a lot of, not a lot, but they definitely have questions about, well, what would that mean exactly? What would an ordinance for Melrose look like?

▶ 36:52 Speaker 7: To which we say, we got to work on that. What would an ordinance like that look like for Melrose? But overall, we've had a lot of good feedback from the community.

▶ 37:02 Speaker 7: And with that, I would like to ask respectfully to the Board of Aldermen if we can work together to make Melrose bring your own back community.

▶ 37:09 Speaker 3: Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Inferna.

▶ 37:13 Gail Infurna: Thank you very much, Mr. President. Thank you all for all the work that you do do. The outreach that you have been doing in the community is really overwhelming. And your presentation this evening, I know, Jean, when we met, I really kind of turned the corner and I feel as I'm doing true confessions here this evening that I do recycle the plastic bags now and I have to say I wasn't doing that I wasn't even really that remotely aware of it prior to this so so I really appreciate all the two are doing I wonder going back to the businesses and I know the businesses are embracing it and everything but I'm going to tell you when I go to the local grocery store and I haven't gotten that good that I carry my own bags in I'll get there but I haven't done that yet but when they're packing my bags oh my gosh they're putting three things in each bag and I'm like oh no no no please just put them in put them in put them in you know less bags and and whatnot and I wonder if there's been any outreach to them to educate on that I know that they there are certain rules that you can't mix um you know we meet with whatever but but still they're just like oh three here to hear this and I'm like oh just please you know I can carry I you know I can strong arms I can carry so I just thought you know is there a way that you could you know reach out to the the local grocery store so that they you know maybe understand because a lot of times they're younger people that are cashing doing the cashier stuff and and maybe they just think they're doing you a favor I think you know you want all those bags around and and whatever I

▶ 38:59 Speaker 7: I think that's a really good question and to be honest with you that's one of

▶ 39:03 Speaker 6: the starting points that we went to in fact Jim when was it we went and met

▶ 39:08 Speaker 6: with this a couple years ago because we thought oh well that seems like a really

▶ 39:12 Speaker 7: easy way to make a big difference right if we're not triple bagging everything if you're not putting my pen in a bag you know it seems like you buy one thing

▶ 39:21 Speaker 7: and I think there is a lot of room for for reduction there so we as a

▶ 39:26 Speaker 8: committee met with Shaw's Walgreens I think twice CBS didn't want to meet we

▶ 39:33 Speaker 7: kind of talked to they weren't as receptive Rite Aid we Oh Trudy did

▶ 39:43 Speaker 6: eventually meet with CBS the issue that we found is that it's really difficult

▶ 39:51 Speaker 7: for them to to embrace this kind of change I think it's because they

▶ 39:55 Speaker 8: understand that it's a good idea I think in the case of Shaw's and Walgreens in

▶ 40:00 Speaker 7: particular it's a training issue if you think about you mentioned there's their staff is young I mean these are people who you know don't necessarily have a ton of job experience and I think they have a kind of a hard job and so it's it's you know there's a lot coming at them and I think this the attitude of store management has been that they have enough keeping their hands full of just

▶ 40:24 Speaker 7: training their staff to do the fundamentals of their job and so to add on an additional layer of you know don't use too many bags or be more attentive to people who bring your own bags I don't know if folks have had that situation as well and when you are good and you bring your bag and before you can get it out they've already put everything into your into a plastic bag

▶ 40:48 Speaker 7: so that was definitely a starting point for us and unfortunately we didn't

▶ 40:54 Speaker 8: really get much support from from the businesses and now which was which was

▶ 41:00 Speaker 8: disappointing because I think that it would have been as I said and he's kind

▶ 41:02 Speaker 7: of low-hanging fruit and I will say that that was really an effort when we had those meetings it was really aimed at what we looked at sort of the big producers of plastic bags, you know, the Shaw's, the Walgreens, the CVS. I think we

▶ 41:18 Speaker 5: contacted Rite Aid as well. I would also say, Gail, that even if we if we reduced a small portion by better, more careful use of bagging, we still have a large amount of plastic bags that are being produced and we have all this problem with them. So though it would be good to reduce the amount that is generated when you're talking about it just seems to us that the best way

▶ 41:46 Speaker 5: forward then is let's see if we can change this by by redo eliminating this problem and go into reusable bags but I want to tell you every bag that comes

▶ 42:04 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: home goes back to recycling thank you thank you I know exactly we've we've talked before and you came to Rotary and the it does happen so often when you're in line and you're still unloading your groceries that they're starting to bag and basically I just make them take it out so and if the manager is there I'll say you know what I have I have my own bags you should you like you guys used to ask paper or plastic back in the day you know when they first started with having fancy plastic bags that everyone was like intrigued by and there's no reason why that you know their cashier can't be asking your own or plastic you know would you are you using your own or just what kind of bag would you like today you know I mean it's it's not that difficult a piece to add to their to their training however I agree with you Jim that it would be better to just not not have the issue at all and one thing we found in in some other countries and I don't know if any of our surrounding communities have have done this I'd be interested to know is that if you want a bag from the merchant you have to pay for it a plastic bag I mean it's like you know to two euro I mean it's like you know I don't know half a euro or two set of fifty cents or whatever have you has anyone done anything like that in surrounding areas yeah there are several

▶ 43:32 Speaker 6: communities in Massachusetts that have done that and you're right it is common

▶ 43:36 Speaker 7: you know Ireland I know many folks in this area travel to Ireland they have I

▶ 43:41 Speaker 8: think it's a 10 cent levy on on bags so definitely the largest community and in

▶ 43:48 Speaker 7: Massachusetts that has implemented that approach is came city of Cambridge and

▶ 43:55 Speaker 7: in Boston's proposed ordinance yeah right and so some of the ordinance give businesses the option to charge a fee if they would like as well so what what

▶ 44:09 Speaker 7: we've learned about that is that those ordinances are very effective in terms

▶ 44:14 Speaker 6: of behavior change right because as soon as you put in the the fees are I think Cambridge is 10 cents so but it's enough I think it's the psychological burden of

▶ 44:22 Speaker 7: it more than the actual economic burden of it that people pretty quickly say I'm not gonna pay for our bag, you know, and they it really sort of reinforces the bring your own bag Policy, it's also frankly something that the business community

▶ 44:41 Speaker 7: Embraces, you know, there is a cost for them in terms of bags The fact that everyone in the community Follows the same rules so that you know If I'm a business and I'm charging for a bag everyone else is right It's it's a few instead of getting that bag for free now. You're actually you're paying for the bag, right? So it's not a tax or anything like that So, you know, it's effective in terms of behavior change and it is something that's been embraced by the business community in those communities

▶ 45:12 Speaker 9: I would add that we had a breakfast meeting

▶ 45:14 Speaker 7: We were invited to discuss this issue at the Chamber of Commerce Main Street merchants breakfast meeting on August 8th and

▶ 45:24 Speaker 6: And, you know, a handful of mainstream businesses were there.

▶ 45:26 Speaker 7: We had a really good conversation, and they, I didn't know how they would, what they would think about this idea of the fee, but I think they actually suggested it first, like they were very interested in being able to recoup the cost, you know, especially if during the

▶ 45:49 Speaker 7: transition period, if consumers switch, you know, are still getting the hang of remembering their bags and instead they're getting a paper bag instead of a plastic bag. Being able to charge a five or ten cent fee is important for the business in order to be able to defray that cost.

▶ 46:03 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: And the businesses would keep that money that was generated from that to help with their

▶ 46:09 Speaker 1: expenses?

▶ 46:10 Speaker 7: Correct. Yeah, I believe that's how it works in any of these communities that have taken that approach.

▶ 46:14 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: And I know that both Whole Foods and Shaw's have places to recycle your bags because I bring mine there but what about like CVS and Rite Aid I'm not familiar with them having any kind of drop-off for recycling their bags yeah I can't speak

▶ 46:35 Speaker 6: specifically to Rite Aid I will say that it's it's common a lot of the big box

▶ 46:42 Speaker 7: stores so Target's Lowe's many of the big box stores will have recycling centers where you can bring your plastic bags and any kind of plastic film so if to your bread bags or tissue wrapping or any of that kind of stuff you can take all of that and put it in those bins so there's certainly a lot of those recycling opportunities available city yard now every saturday collects plastic film plastic bag packaging as well in terms of

▶ 47:12 Speaker 7: our community specifically cvs for a period of time had a receptacle for plastic bags but unfortunately I would look in it and it would be filled with garbage because people and I think that's a little bit of a you know it's a good reminder of the magnitude of the behavior change I mean if you look at a regular recycling bin on Main Street you'll see the contamination and this idea of recycling plastic bags unfortunately is just not on people's radar screen so they had the bin they tried and I think it just was so contaminated with trash and other things that eventually they had to take it away I think it was there

▶ 47:50 Mary Beth McAteer-Margolis: roughly six months well and the other thing that I remember from someone on the recycling committee or at some point in conversation about recycling was one of the first things you one of the one of the additional ours that you can add is refuse so sometimes I just refuse a bag and they'll be like you don't want a bag like no I don't need a bag to carry you know half a gallon of milk out to my car well really I'm like yeah really really keep you know so I mean I think that's another good piece of education in the process of helping us figure out what it is that we could do you know as a board to and when to support your initiative so thank you thank you for bringing this to us thank you thank you

▶ 48:35 Michael P. Zwirko: Alden's work oh thank you mr. president and thanks thanks again for coming here tonight for this I know that there's a lot of work put into the presentation but also just year-to-date outreach and effort on the committee's part to get all this done so it's extremely time-consuming but it's clear that you've done yeoman's amount of work on this so thank you for that and I also want to say that's very important too because if we get to the point where we're deliberating through an ordinance on this you know all the efforts aren't won't be in vain because you know we're coming forward with this ordinance with all this education in advance and that kind of helps the outreach and the you know the passage hopefully of any legislation that comes before us so it's it's a very good effort so people don't feel that this all of a sudden came out of nowhere that there's been a lot of preparation and education on the issue I just had one quick question and you actually alluded to it when you're speaking with Alderman McAteer-Margolis could you just talk a little bit more about the meeting that you just had with the chamber on the 8th what were some of the feedback I know you had mentioned the fee use but was there any other feedback that the chamber themselves provided any guidance or you know just any other information you could provide us with I'd be interested to know yeah

▶ 49:46 Speaker 7: absolutely so it was a good meeting it was our first stop we'd met previously with the executive director of the chamber and we're in the process of serving you know like an online survey of businesses but there's no substitute for sitting down and actually having a conversation and you know first of all and it was myself and Trudy McDonald on the committee who were there one of

▶ 50:12 Speaker 7: of the things I think was was really nice about the discussion was that the

▶ 50:18 Speaker 6: business community was really engaged in the in the topic and they they were

▶ 50:24 Speaker 7: really appreciative that we were there talking to them about it at a you know where we're at a very early stage in this process rather than just trying to

▶ 50:34 Speaker 6: jump straight to the end and say here's an ordinance and now you have to do it

▶ 50:39 Speaker 8: and you know they really want to be involved in thinking about what this is

▶ 50:40 Speaker 7: I think some of the businesses are more aware there's a continuum of sort of awareness and experience with these kinds of things in terms of if they're you know shopping and other communities that have bands or maybe they have you know a location in a community that has a band coming up or something like that some of them it was more on their radar screen than others but in general they just very appreciative to be able to kind of be at the table and i think that if we were to move forward be fortunate enough to move forward with developing an ordinance for melrose that you know i don't know if what the right procedure is if it's a working group or something that that does have some representatives of the business community as a voice into the development of the ordinance you know i think that's something that we heard loud and clear from them the The discussion with them was really more along the lines of kind of the how's and the what's

▶ 51:37 Speaker 7: of what an ordinance would define and how it would work, and as I mentioned before, this idea of charging a fee came up organically in the discussion, so I think they were just very engaged in it, asked us some good questions, and it was a small sample and we didn't sort

▶ 52:00 Speaker 7: make them sign anything at the end of it but overall we felt encouraged that we could work in partnership with with the business community to develop something

▶ 52:08 Scott M. Forbes: that would work for Melrose great and thank you for that I think that's a really wise move in addition to the work that Trudy's been doing with the seniors that's that's helpful as well so again kudos to you for doing this and thanks for coming here tonight that's all I had mr. president you Alderman Forbes Thank You mr. president kind of stole my thunder with the Chamber of Commerce but that's okay I was interested to see the feedback from the senior groups and how they what was their reaction to to all of that because I know that you know they go and do their daily shopping everything like my my grandmother for example and she was in Melrose she would do all of her shopping she used her bags for other things and she always want to have a little stockpile something so I didn't know how the senior community reacted to that the senior community

▶ 52:51 Speaker 6: it's interesting because I was thinking of them earlier when Alderman MacMaster

▶ 52:59 Speaker 7: Magalhaes was speaking about this idea of you know remember when plastic was first around they used to ask you oh you want plastic or paper one of the things that's been interesting to speak with the seniors is that a lot of them lived

▶ 53:16 Speaker 7: most of their lives before plastic bags and so the idea of living your life without plastic bags is quite possible for them because they did it and so I I think that they really have that historical appreciation

▶ 53:29 Speaker 7: of how much has changed in the world in terms of this really just almost overwhelming amount of plastic packaging and plastic bags that kind of comes into our lives. So in general, they've been receptive to this as something that, again, they lived sometimes

▶ 53:47 Speaker 8: for a long time without a plastic bag.

▶ 53:51 Speaker 7: We have made a lot of effort to get reusable bags to them,

▶ 53:56 Speaker 7: and they like reusable bags. One of the things that I was interested in with the seniors is will they like, maybe they like the plastic bags because they're really lightweight. Sometimes as we get older, you don't want to carry heavy stuff, but we've actually heard that they like the durability and the quality of the reusable bag. It's one of the positive points. I don't know if I'm allowed to refer to my supporting expert

▶ 54:22 Speaker 7: in the crowd.

▶ 54:23 Speaker 6: Trudy, would there be anything else that you'd add?

▶ 54:28 Speaker 4: I agree with the outreach to the senior housing counselors.

▶ 54:30 Speaker 7: I'm going to do another one at the Milano Center for the people who don't live in senior housing who frequently

▶ 54:37 Speaker 4: Overall, I'd say the reception was very positive.

▶ 54:41 Speaker 4: I see people walking around with the bags that I gave them. And I'm really happy to see them. I have to tell you a little story. Yesterday or the day before, I was in Shaw's, and a gentleman came in behind me, and I was checking out, and I gave him my own bag. And this gentleman came in with a reusable bag, and he already had groceries in it. And I said, oh, you remembered your bag. He said, oh, I'm so glad you noticed.

▶ 55:04 Speaker 4: It's the first time I remember to bring it in the shop.

▶ 55:10 Speaker 4: oh, you're doing the right thing. Anyway, people are really proud when they do remember.

▶ 55:26 Scott M. Forbes: I think the hardest thing to do is to try to change the culture in a community because they're people are just used to doing things one way becomes the new normal for them and then anytime you do want to throw anything that's going to change that people always will resist a little bit but I do think that what you have going for you is that the product stinks the Shaw's bags the quality of material and I think that these businesses already see this coming because you see on the lines they have their own option to buy their own reusable bag so I think they know that it's coming and then with all the money that they end up spending for these you know mass quantities of purchases for reusable plastic for plastic bags they can make a better quality paper bag and you see that at Whole Foods you see that as a lot of the other grocery stores as well so and then even the communities will have you know these small business owners maybe they come up with their own bag for available to purchase too so there are other ways to to look by that and they'll see that as an opportunity and also an advertisement you walk in downtown with a with a business logo on a bag that they actually paid for you know it's it's just changing the culture one step at a time so I think you're doing great work and please keep it up

▶ 56:33 Speaker 6: actually your comment prompted me to remember something from our meeting with

▶ 56:36 Speaker 7: the chamber members that one of the ideas that came out of that discussion

▶ 56:43 Speaker 6: was being able to maybe through the chamber make a Melrose themed reusable

▶ 56:48 Speaker 7: bag the business because the smaller businesses could then sell because obviously Shaw's and the big chains do that but the smaller businesses don't necessarily do that and that could be a really good sort of you know community spirit rally around the business community here kind of initiative yeah

▶ 57:00 Speaker 3: yeah definitely step in the right direction so thank you thank you mr.

▶ 57:06 Monica C. Medeiros: Thank You Alderman Medeiros thank you thank you very much I wanted to first take a moment to compliment you I had the opportunity to go to the first two and I believe there's a third one tomorrow is that correct I learned how

▶ 57:22 Monica C. Medeiros: to work the AC so yes the first two presentations that you've done this summer and it's tomorrow night is the third one and that's at the Senior

▶ 57:37 Monica C. Medeiros: Center seven to 830 the second life of plastic bottles mostly about and I found

▶ 57:53 Monica C. Medeiros: it very educational and Robin did a terrific job leading that up and and I think I learned a lot and I know the committee has reached out I've got to sit down with with Trudy and some others about plastic bags I'm definitely you

▶ 58:14 Monica C. Medeiros: know that's a big change you know I do sort of remember life before plastic bags but not very much and it seems like it's the way we've done things and I know I've talked to you about you know we use them in our house for we you know we keep them and we use them for trash and we use them to take something somewhere and and we do use those quite a bit so I had a good meeting and you know thinking about some of the different things like you say what about packing you know what do you do with your dirty laundry and somebody said in the shoes and they said oh you can use your bread bag for your shoes this pair of shoes fits in there pretty well so I think there are some ways to go about this I think it's certainly a learning curve and certainly a big change in in the way of life for a lot of people I do think if an ordinance comes through I think having a long introductory period is is the right way to do it so people can think about those things. I think that it has been sort of eye-opening. I really

▶ 59:24 Monica C. Medeiros: enjoyed the plastic is fantastic or less plastic is fantastic speech. And when we learned about the sort of the history of plastic and thinking that plastic hasn't been around for all that long, only, you know, 100 years, a little less even, right? And that plastic could be made from different materials other than fossil fuels.

▶ 59:50 Monica C. Medeiros: So I hope, and that's one of the things that becomes, I become hesitant over, if we encourage people so much to say use paper rather than plastic, and I know your goal is really to get you to bring your own bag and not use those at all, that maybe there might be something else that might come up along the way that would be better. And I guess I have some questions. And I wonder, can they make plastic bags out of it? We learned how plastic can be made out of milk and the concept of making plastic to not last as long. Right now, plastic is made to last forever, hundreds of years. And the concept of making plastic that might actually

▶ 1:00:42 Monica C. Medeiros: fall apart and degrade sooner? Is this something that might happen in the near future? And I know we had some bags that were sent to us from a bag manufacturer. And maybe you can talk a little bit about that.

▶ 1:00:56 Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely.

▶ 1:00:58 Speaker 7: And I want to say that after the presentation with the woman who spoke about making plastic from other things, you and I spoke briefly. And you mentioned that same point about that there's this imbalance between something that is used, it's very disposable, but it lasts forever

▶ 1:01:13 Speaker 6: and that's just wrong.

▶ 1:01:16 Speaker 7: So we actually had a slide, I went by it really quickly where I said like, you know, it's only used for 12 minutes, but it lasts forever and it was really that point because I think that we all agree with you that there's this, you know, and it's not just plastic bags. There are many single use plastics that, you know, you get a straw or a fork and you use it and it lasts forever in a landfill

▶ 1:01:39 Speaker 7: or in the ocean, et cetera.

▶ 1:01:41 Speaker 6: So there are a couple of things that are out there.

▶ 1:01:44 Speaker 7: I want to address the point that you raised about the bags.

▶ 1:01:50 Speaker 9: I think the company's name is GXT or GTX bags.

▶ 1:01:53 Speaker 7: And they sent samples to all of the aldermen of their product. And I know they have several products. I think the samples you received were just one particular model of their bag. I assume it's one of the good ones, their high end product if they're sending it out as a sample so they're a company that actually has approached many of the cities and towns who've considered ordinances and and presented this as an option they haven't necessarily been forthcoming about what their bag is because they talk about it as being degradable and on the face of it it does seem like oh this is great you know because you know we all occasionally have a need for a single-use plastic bag so wouldn't it be nice if there was one that would degrade and not lead to all the problems that we discussed unfortunately their particular product we took one of the bags and one of the towns are there's a woman that we know through mass green network who works at a Research Institute and I sent her the bag and she had it analyzed in a mass spectrometer to see what the chemical composition of it is and it's 84% a plastic bag so it's less of a plastic

▶ 1:03:04 Speaker 7: bag than a hundred percent and whatever the other 16% is does help it to break down more quickly but then it's really just micro plastics that are getting by fish and then you know I eat the tuna and I'm eating there the plastic bag so unfortunately that isn't a solution there are compostable bags you know if There are folks who have, you know, if you compost at home, you're probably familiar with these, or Whole Foods uses them in their big compost bins as well. So you can buy compostable trash bags, but the problem is, well, I guess that's getting off topic a little bit.

▶ 1:03:44 Speaker 7: There really isn't a cost-effective compostable bag. And one of the problems with those compostable bags is because here in Melrose, we don't have municipal composting. So it would just, you can't recycle a compostable bag, and it would cause all the same problems in the recycling works, tingling things up. And if you put it in your garbage, it just gets burnt or et cetera.

▶ 1:04:10 Monica C. Medeiros: And so everybody at home should also know that we don't send our trash to a landfill or drop it in the ocean or anything like that, but we do incinerate. So anything that, although there's protections and everything, anything that we are putting into our trash is getting incinerated. So the plastic is going into the air. We assume it should be being caught and siphoned out, but nothing's 100%, right?

▶ 1:04:37 Speaker 6: I'm looking at Jim because he's the chemist.

▶ 1:04:42 Speaker 7: it's maybe speak to that more but you're right it is incinerated and you know it's there is something left what is it sludge or there's some stuff left so

▶ 1:04:51 Speaker 8: after that's not not good well truthfully when you when you incinerate

▶ 1:04:57 Speaker 5: a plastic you you are pretty much breaking it down to carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide like you are the rest of the trash so to a certain extent for Melrose that is true as we are sending the the great majority of the plastic bags that are going into the trash then are being incinerated and it's breaking down and so if it's not escaping into the environment then it's not as big a problem as if it's in a landfill and slowly breaking down so I you know I

▶ 1:05:32 Monica C. Medeiros: know this this will continue to go on and I'm glad that we've been able to to talk more and I know I had mentioned and I do still kind of feel the same way that I I don't think that I would personally be supportive of something that had a monetary component involved in it a fee or but I am wondering and you know you may not know the answer right now is there anything that stops business from charging for a bag right now and I don't know if there is such an

▶ 1:06:09 Monica C. Medeiros: ordinance maybe there is if they had wanted to do so get some peer pressure

▶ 1:06:21 Speaker 7: for lack of a better word because you know no one wants to stand out as in

▶ 1:06:25 Speaker 7: that way and not frankly that was part of the feedback that we heard when we

▶ 1:06:30 Speaker 6: met with the chamber businesses a couple weeks ago is that no one wants to be the

▶ 1:06:37 Speaker 7: only one who's not giving out plastic bags or or giving out bags period and or charging for a bag and I think one of the things that's very useful to this community about an ordinance is it it gives them coverage right it's to say you know it's this is this is the law I'm complying with the law and we're all

▶ 1:07:00 Monica C. Medeiros: on a level playing field and and there are some businesses that do incentivize incentivize bring your own bags I think we had talked about Whole Foods as as one so if you bring your own bags there they actually give you a discount right

▶ 1:07:17 Speaker 7: a nickel Green Street foods as well Green Street Natural Foods has a punch card system where if you you get a punch every time you bring your own bag and you get to a discount eventually when you pull up

▶ 1:07:26 Monica C. Medeiros: your card so there definitely are some businesses that are local definitely doesn't get much more local than Green Street and that are doing this and so I just I appreciate it all and it did definitely open my eyes to you know just looking around the the bathroom and looking at all the things and that are there that are made out of plastic whether it be the shampoo bottle to the hairbrush to yeah I mean the mirror that has a plastic rim around it that there's so much of it and i i'm glad that you know you've opened my eyes and i hope you know more of the community as well through education that we can all make choices about some of those things and

▶ 1:08:11 Monica C. Medeiros: what we choose to buy and and how we can you know reduce our use of plastic overall thank you thank

▶ 1:08:17 Peter D. Mortimer: you alderman mortimer i think it's pretty much been uh covered people who went before me uh touched on most of the things i was going to say and one of the things i did want to do was just uh which has also been said was give you a chance to uh plug that presentation for tomorrow night seven o'clock at uh the milano the bb and uh where that is so that's yeah same same place but no well

▶ 1:08:45 Speaker 3: close i'm glad you gotta correct me thank you very much mr president thank you alderman lemmerman

▶ 1:08:48 Jennifer L. Lemmerman: thank you mr president thank you very much for this presentation and coming down tonight to talk to us about this and all the work that you've put into it beforehand i know you've had a lot of meetings and a lot of discussions and um sounds like they've been very productive so um you know i think it's it's difficult to react to specifically without um proposed language for an order which you know hopefully will come um but i will say you know to me it feels like a common sense step in the right direction for for mauros um i think there's there's awareness of the issue i think in general this is a this is a topic that people know about and and understand and i think that that has brought us as far as it can bring us in terms of changing behavior probably and and that this is a point where an order or using our laws like you say to increase our public health and our and help our environment this is kind of a perfect example of that i know for me i don't always remember to bring my bags or i'm out not planning to go to the grocery store so i haven't put them back in my trunk but the two places that i always remember my bags is costco and aldi because one doesn't have any bags and one charges you for bags and so i think when you have that extra incentive you tend to remember you know and i've seen it in my own experience so i just you know wanted to say that i do hope that we see um you know an order before us and that we can debate and we can figure out those details of how how it works best for maros but i'm excited to have that

▶ 1:10:13 Speaker 3: that discussion so thank you thank you thank you the order is before you what's your pleasure motion to place on file mr. president Alderman's work almost place the order on file motion second by Alderman Mortimer on the motion all those in favor opposed motion passes thank you for coming in folks thank you very much thank you thank you order number 2018