Help Fight Litter in Wheaton

Help Wheaton fight litter-- bring your reusable bags with you when you go shopping.

Those of us who have been working to clean up our communities are excited to see Montgomery County finally taking meaningful action to address litter. All too often the solution has been to have community members who want a clean and green community organize endless cleanups. While some folks are complaining that the 5 cent bag fee is going to be a burden, let me say that cleaning plastic bags out of Sligo and Rock Creek is also a burden.

The 5 cent fee could bring in more than $1 million a year to the county's Water Quality Protection Fund to fight litter.  Of course, in this case, the good news would be significantly less revenue generated because that would mean fewer plastic bags are being used.

In the District, there was such a big drop in disposable bag usage that revenue was significantly less than expected. The opponents of the bag fee noted at first that the fee was not working.  In fact with a big reduction in disposable bag usage, less money was needed to clean up litter.

Currently, Montgomery County is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to fight litter, much of which is plastic bags.  In other words we are subsidizing usage of disposable bags.  If you want to exacerbate a problem, subsidize it.  In these tough economic times, it is ridiculous that we are doing this.  The current plan addresses the problem of litter by going to its source. Using funds from the bag fees to clean litter is a cost-effective and equitable way to address the problem.   

The aesthetic issue is only one of the problems caused by litter.  To learn more about why plastic litter is a major problem and what you can do to help, come to our free screening of  The showing is on Monday, January 9, at the Brookside Visitors Center.  Space is limited, so please register at http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=4lu6twbab&oeidk=a07e5g4jr3311b2cd79