Massachusetts

As legislators renew push for plastic bag ban, much of Massachusetts already covered – The Boston Globe

Published

1 year ago

June 25, 2023

As legislators renew push for plastic bag ban, much of Massachusetts already covered – The Boston Globe

“There is an argument that maybe the marketplace is working on its own,” said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. “One could argue in the cities and towns where there was the most pressure to do it, they’ve already done it.”

A handful of retailers in Massachusetts, including national grocer Whole Foods, already offer a discount for customers who bring their own reusable bag.

In April, supermarket chain Stop & Shop started charging a 10-cent fee for paper bags, and the company has pledged to eliminate plastic bags from its checkout counters across the Northeast by July. When he first heard about the change, Hurst said, he remembered thinking it “kind of kills the bag ban and bag tax bill.”

Massachusetts and New Hampshire are the only two states in New England without a statewide plastic bag ban, even as lawmakers have been pushing for one in the Bay State since at least 2009.

This year, some lawmakers and environmental advocates aim to tie the patchwork of more than 150 individual regulations into a unified, statewide rule that would ban retailers from providing any single-use plastic bags, with a handful of exceptions, and would mandate they charge at least 10 cents for paper and reusable bags.

Alex Vai, campaigns coordinator for the Massachusetts Surfrider Foundation, said he feels more momentum behind the bans today than anytime since he first started volunteering with the organization in 2016, the same year a ban nearly made it into the state budget.

“It’s pretty obvious that there’s a lot of local energy and desire for this,” Vai said. “Over the last 10-plus years while this has been rolling along, the local laws have only been getting stronger and stronger, and setting a higher and higher floor for what the state should be able to achieve.”

Nearly half of the state’s 351 cities and towns have bag bans. A Globe analysis found the population in those communities adds up to about 69 percent of all residents statewide.

It’s a sea change from 2016, when the Massachusetts Senate passed a budget that included a provision similar to this session’s bill. At that time, around 30 cities and towns had enacted their own regulations, the Globe reported.

Today, that figure is closer to 160, including Boston, Worcester, and Springfield — the state’s three most populous cities — according to data collected by the Massachusetts Sierra Club.

“In a sense, we’re already there. We’re just trying to get the last third,” said Clint Richmond, a Massachusetts Sierra Club executive board member.

Specific regulations vary from city to city and town to town, leaving a patchwork for retailers to navigate, especially those with locations across municipal borders, according to Brian Houghton of the Massachusetts Food Association, which represents grocers across the Commonwealth.

“When you get a big [retailer] that’s got 100-plus sites across the state, it gets pretty tedious,” Houghton said. “A fee here, a ban there, a certain amount of plastic . . . some allow compostable, which can’t be mixed into other plastic bags for recycling. It’s lot of issues going on, so it gets difficult to deal with these things on a state level.”

He said that piecemeal approach was probably one driver of Stop & Shop’s and other retailers’ moves away from plastic bags and toward a single, company-wide policy.

The proposed restrictions in the Legislature would not apply to bags used to carry prescription medication, some perishable and frozen food, or small items that could otherwise be lost, as well as bags “protecting articles of clothing on a hanger” given by retailers. The law would also carve out exceptions for nonprofits distributing groceries and clothing at a reduced cost, and for customers paying with an electronic benefits transfer card, more commonly known as EBT.

State Representative Mindy Domb, who is a key sponsor of the House bill, said she sees the disparities play out across her district. A CVS Pharmacy in Granby stocks plastic bags, she said, while another location in Amherst — less than 10 miles away — only offers paper. Meanwhile, some of her constituents are, by now, so used to local bans that they assume a state mandate must already be in place, she said.

Domb said creating a unified set of standards would ease confusion among merchants and customers, and it would help reduce feelings of economic competition between cities and towns with different bag standards.

In its current form, the bill would not prevent local municipalities from enforcing their own, stricter bans or heightened fees, though, so some of that competition may linger.

Senator James Eldridge, the bill’s original sponsor in the Senate, said he is confident the bill would clear the Senate, but its fate in the House is murkier, although he noted that an increasing number of legislators in the House represent communities with bans already in place.

“The Senate is very comfortable to take action,” Eldridge said. “I do feel like there’s growing support amongst the House.”

Daniel Kool can be reached at daniel.kool@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @dekool01.

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Massachusetts

How Mass. leaders are responding to Trump's mass deportation promises

Published

6 hours ago

November 19, 2024

Press Room

How Mass. leaders are responding to Trump's mass deportation promises

Elected officials in Massachusetts are reacting to President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants by declaring a national emergency and using military assets.

Trump campaigned on a promise of the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, and he says he intends to deliver on it.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who declared a state of emergency around migrant arrivals last year, says something needs to be done, but she expressed concern about communities being uprooted.

“I think it’s absolutely appropriate that there be enforcement and deportation of individuals who commit crime, including violent crime. That’s very, very important,” Healey said. “We recognize it would be devastating if there were mass raids, here and across the country, that took out people who’ve been working in this country for a long time, who have families and kids here.”

While Massachusetts is not a sanctuary state, it has eight sanctuary cities.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu called attention to the Trust Act, passed in 2014. It distinguishes the difference in roles between Boston police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

“We know that the fear of someone who might be living, coming from an immigrant family, not then reporting crimes or not speaking out about different issues, actually then makes the entire community less safe,” Wu said.

Cambridge is also a sanctuary city — it has been since 1985.

“Cambridge affirms the basic human rights and dignity of every human being and provides education, health and other critical services to all residents of Cambridge, regardless of their immigration status,” a city spokesperson told NBC10 Boston in a statement.

Leaders in Worcester, the state’s second-largest city, say it will always remain inclusive and will never target individuals based on their immigration status.

At the former ICE detention center in Dartmouth, there are no plans for the sheriff to reimplement any future detention programs.

“This organization has been there and done that,” said Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux.

ICE closed the detention center in 2021 after President Joe Biden took office.

Heroux’s predecessor, former Sheriff Tom Hodgson — a strong ally of Trump who served as the president-elect’s campaign chairman in Massachusetts — blasted the Biden administration and called the center’s closing “a political hit job” orchestrated by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

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Massachusetts

Mass. says some police officers have been bypassing required training

Published

14 hours ago

November 18, 2024

Press Room

Mass. says some police officers have been bypassing required training

Massachusetts officials have notified police chiefs that some officers have been getting around parts of their online training.

In a letter last week, Municipal Police Training Committee Executive Director Jeff Fanrsworth said officials had learned that some police officers have been “bypassing their TY25 online training by using technologies that override controls meant to prevent fast-forwarding through the training.”

Farnsworth noted that the committee had found “instances where trainings that should take hours to complete are finished in a matter of minutes.”

The committee is working with Acadis, the company that operates the training system, to look into the issue and determine what needs to be done to address it.

Police chiefs whose departments have members who finished online courses in less than the minimum expected runtime are being notified, Farnsworth said. Those officers will be required to do all their training for this year in person.

“Any officer that has failed to complete any required training in its entirety will be required to attend in-person training and their names will be forwarded to [the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission] for failure to successfully complete in-service training,” Farnsworth wrote in the letter.

The POST Commission, established by a criminal justice reform law in 2020, maintains lists of disciplinary records, suspensions and decertifications for Massachusetts police officers, handling claims of misconduct.

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Massachusetts

Deadly E. Coli Outbreak Sickens MA Residents, Prompts Carrot Recall

Published

22 hours ago

November 18, 2024

Press Room

Deadly E. Coli Outbreak Sickens MA Residents, Prompts Carrot Recall

MASSACHUSETTS — Public health officials are investigating a multi-state E. coli outbreak that has been tied to multiple brands of recalled organic carrots, and has sickened people in Massachusetts and nearly two dozen other states.

Grimmway Farms recalled multiple sizes and brands of bagged organic whole and baby carrots on Nov. 16 because they may be contaminated with a Shiga toxin-producing E. coli. The carrots were sold at a number of retailers including Target, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Wegmans, and Whole Foods.

A total of 39 people have gotten sick nationwide after contracting E. coli from this outbreak, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One person from California died, and 15 had to be hospitalized.

“The recalled carrots should no longer be available for purchase but may be in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers,” the Food and Drug Administration added.

For bags of organic baby carrots, the best-if-used-by date ranged from Sept. 11 to Nov. 12.

Brands selling these carrots included 365, Bunny Luv, Cal-Organic, Compliments, Full Circle, Good & Gather, GreenWise, Grimmway Farms, Marketside, Nature’s Promise, O-Organic, President’s Choice, Raley’s, Simple Truth, Sprouts, Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, Wholesome Pantry.

Packages of whole organic carrots were available for purchase in stores from Aug. 14 to Oct. 23, according to the CDC. The brands distributing these carrots included 365, Bunny Luv, Cal-Organic, Compliments, Full Circle, Good & Gather, GreenWise, Marketside, Nature’s Promise, O-Organic, President’s Choice, Simple Truth, Trader Joe’s, Wegmans, and Wholesome Pantry.

There was no best-if-used-by dates on the bags of organic whole carrots, the recall states.

Consumers are asked not to eat these carrots if they still have some in their refrigerator or freezer, and either throw them out or return them to the store. Also, the CDC advises that consumers wash any items and surfaces that may have touched the recalled carrots, using hot soapy water or the dishwasher.

E. coli can cause serious symptoms, including high fever, diarrhea, consistent vomiting, and dehydration. Anyone who experiences any of these symptoms is advised to call their healthcare provider.

The CDC also said that the true number of sick people in the outbreak is likely much higher than reported, and that it takes three to four weeks to determine if an ill person is part of an outbreak.

Illnesses have also been reported in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, California, Oregon, and Washington.

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