title
An ordinance of the County of Allegheny, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania amending and supplementing the Allegheny County Code of Ordinances, Division 5, entitled “Health and Sanitation,” by the creation of a new Chapter 525, entitled “Single Use Plastics” in order to establish a prohibition on the distribution of certain single use plastic bags within Allegheny County.
body
WHEREAS, the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania at Article I, Section 27 provides that “[t]he people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment”; and
WHEREAS, in an effort to combat the plastic pollution crisis, a number of local and state governments across the United States and abroad have focused their efforts on regulating the use of single-use plastic bags; and
WHEREAS, Americans use 100 billion plastic bags a year, which requires 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture; and
WHEREAS, single-use plastics not only create pollution in their creation, they also litter our communities, end up in our waterways, and obstruct our recycling machines, and following their use, single-use plastic bags take approximately 500 years to decompose; and,
WHEREAS, single-use plastic bags do not biodegrade even when properly landfilled. The bags then end up shredding, and degrading into toxic plastic ribbons that contaminate the soil and water that then enters the food chain; and
WHEREAS, in 2021, PennEnvironment, a non-profit dedicated towards eliminating climate impacts, released a report entitled “Microplastics in Pennsylvania” that found microplastics in 100 percent of tested Pennsylvania waterways, which leads to microplastics in our drinking water, harming not only our environment but also potentially our physical health; and,
WHEREAS, plastic bags or film and styrofoam present significant difficulties in recycling, because they require specialized processing due to their light weigh...
Click here for full text