Public can weigh in on plastic straw rules
Hearing set for Sept. 10
Automatically getting a plastic straw with your drink could become a thing of the past in restaurants across Ulster County under a proposal that will be the subject of a public hearing Sept. 10.
The law, if enacted, would require all restaurants and fastfood establishments in the county to ask customers whether they want a straw, rather than automatically providing them. The law also would require those establishments to inform patrons of the change by posting signs that read “Single Use Straw Available On Request.”
The Sept. 10 hearing before the
Ulster County Legislature is scheduled for 7:10 p.m. on the sixth floor of the County Office Building, 244 Fair St., Kingston.
Legislators who support the measure say requiring patrons to ask for a straw would empower each customer to choose to help eliminate plastic pollution, and would be a small step toward the elimination single-use plastic.
Legislator David Donaldson, who is co-sponsoring the bill with Legislator
Joseph Maloney, said the law would give food-service establishments a “push” to reduce the amount of waste they generate.
“Is it going to save the world? No,” Donaldson, DKingston, said during a recent Laws and Rules Committee meeting. But, he said, “it begins the conversation” and can help people become more aware of taking things that they don’t necessarily want.
Donaldson said cities that have banned or regulated the use of single-use plastic straws have seen a significant reduction in the number of straws being used.
Locally, some restaurants, including Rough Draft Bar & Books in Uptown Kingston, have begun offering reusable straws instead of the single-use plastic items.
According to the National Wildlife Federation, a not-for-profit conservation group , people in the United States use roughly 500 million plastic straws every day, enough to fill 127 school buses per day, or more than 46,000 buses per year.
Those straws — which don’t biodegrade and find their way by the millions into water bodies across the globe — each year
end up costing the lives of about 100,000 marine animals and more than a million sea birds that ingest the harmful plastic, according to the organization.
The Plastic Pollution Coalition, a project of the non-for-profit advocacy group Earth Island Institute, predicts that the Earth’s oceans will contain more plastic than fish, by weight, by 2050.
Ulster County Legislature Chairman Ken Ronk, R-Wallkill, said that while he understands the reason behind the measure, he is concerned about enforcement, predicting the
county will have to hire additional staff to make certain that restaurants are complying with the new law.
The law would carry a $25 fine for the first offense, a $50 fine for the second offense and a $100 fine for the third offense.
Legislator Kathy Nolan said rather than adopting another law, the county should try to get voluntary compliance through an education campaign.
“I’m concerned if we do this, then one thing and another and another, it just seems like we’re just out to regulate businesses, and we haven’t figured out one concise way to do it,” said Nolan, D-Shandaken.
The proposed law is the latest in a number of measures adopted or under consideration by the Legislature intended to protect the environment and reduce the amount of waste generated within the county.
In 2015, Ulster County began regulating the use of polystyrene foam. And the Legislature currently has under consideration a proposal that would ban the use of single-use plastic retail bags, and there has been some discussion about regulating the use of plastic cutlery.