Any Chance That Maine’s Plastic Bag Ban Could Be Reversed?

Not to get anyone’s hopes up who still are longing for the return of single use plastic bags that are banned in Maine, but there is long shot that the ban could indeed be reversed.

Yesterday in Augusta, Representative Chad Perkins Republic from Dover-Foxcroft sponsored a bill saying that the ban on plastic bags from a year and a half ago should be overturned and he says he has read studies that say single use plastic bags are actually better for the environment than paper bags or the reusable plastic bags are.

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Environmental groups certainly don’t agree.

But the bill proposed will go to a work session before it could or would proceed to the Legislature for a vote

Rep Perkins told News Center Maine

It takes four times as much energy to make a paper bag than to make a single use plastic bag, and those paper bags produce 50% more pollution and use four times as much water as the single use plastic bags. And on top of than, it creates a sharp increase in the release of methane which is a greenhouse gas

As they say, ‘stay tuned’. But also remember lots of things get proposed that never see the light of day again. At the least maybe they’ll discuss the studies cited and then decide whether to move forward or not.

And for the record, if you are fine using recycled feed bags everytime you go to the store, check out a Mainer who makes them and sells them on her farm here.