Doing Your Part to Limit Plastic Waste
Shop, Dine & Do Your Part: A Quick Review of Melrose's Single-Use Plastic Laws
As the summer social season heats up, it’s the perfect time for a refresher on Melrose ordinances aimed at reducing waste from plastic bags, polystyrene packaging, and plastic drink implements.
The three Melrose laws focused on single-use plastics have been on the books for between four and eight years — meaningfully reducing litter on our streets, the city’s overall trash volume, and our collective use of fossil-fuel products.
Although compliance with these laws is generally strong, new restaurants, retailers, and residents may be unaware of the restrictions or be unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the regulations. This brief overview will help recent arrivals get up to speed and provide a recap of the rules for everyone in the city.
Take It Away, Sustainably
The city’s ban on plastic checkout bags dates back to 2018, and it applies to all retailers and restaurants. At the point of sale, businesses can only provide a recyclable paper or a reusable bag, defined as a sewn bag with stitched handles that can be cleaned or machine-washed. Thick plastic bags, such as those issued by stores in some municipalities, do not comply with the ordinance’s definition of reusable bags.
The fine print – exceptions include bags:
For laundry, dry cleaning, and newspapers,
To wrap products in order to prevent or contain moisture
Available in stores to bring loose produce or products to the point of sale
Several years later, in 2022, the city implemented an ordinance prohibiting the use of disposable foam and rigid polystyrene containers for dispensing food and beverages at food establishments. Additionally, retailers may not sell or distribute disposable food containers or packing material made from these materials. Polystyrene may be marked with its Resin Identification Code, a number 6 inside a triangle drawn with chasing arrows. It is sometimes referred to as Styrofoam, a trademarked brand of a type of polystyrene foam.
Need to know more about this material and what this law means for your business? See the city’s FAQs about the polystyrene ordinance.
Stemming the Tide of Nonbiodegradables
To cut down on pollution-creating small plastic items served with drinks, Melrose also implemented an ordinance that bars plastic stirrers and limits the distribution of plastic straws. The 2019 law allows businesses that sell beverages for immediate consumption to provide plastic straws only upon request. The workarounds? Businesses can freely provide straws made of paper or other materials, and customers may also bring their own straws.
The fine print – exceptions applying to plastic straws:
Markets and pharmacies can sell them in packages
Health care facilities can freely give them to patients
In Good Company
Like Melrose, cities and towns across the Commonwealth are taking similar steps to curtail plastic use within their borders. The Sierra Club counts more than 160 municipalities that regulate single-use plastic shopping bags and over 60 that have banned some form of polystyrene.
The environmental nonprofit also tracks innovative plastic-reduction laws being rolled out in pioneering communities. Brookline, Hudson, and Needham have each passed a “Skip the Stuff” bylaw that requires restaurants to allow customers to opt out of single-use plastic utensils and other items, plus a ban onblack plastic, which isn’t recyclable. Two other towns adopted one of those measures: Wellesley voted in “Skip the Stuff,” while Pembroke is barring black plastic.
Although getting laws like these on the books often requires dedicated and sustained advocacy efforts, they’re not fringe projects. Many — often the majority — of citizens want to use less plastic, and structural changes are often necessary to achieve that goal. Now that city officials have codified a few ways to reduce single-use plastic in Melrose, we can all do our part to make shopping and dining in our community more eco-friendly.
Consumers and businesses with questions about the law can email Zero Waste Melrose at zerowastemelrose@gmail.com or contact the Mayor’s Office at mayorsoffice@cityofmelrose.org.
