Group rallies to curtail use of plastic shopping bags

BRANFORD — Branford’s Valerie Petrillo always brings her own bags to the supermarket.

For her, it’s a habit. Leighton Davis doesn’t. He never thinks twice about using single-use plastic bags. Likewise for Michele Malerba, who reuses plastic bags on walks with Romeo, her mixed breed dog.

Enter BYO Branford, a hearty band of 12 that is seeking to encourage their fellow citizens to shift over to reusable bags.

The group, whose name is an acronym for Bring Your Own — but in this case reusable bags — recently met with merchants at Willoughby Wallace Library to gather feedback and field questions on its proposed ordinance to limit single-use plastic bags used at checkout in local stores. It plans to bring the draft ordinance before the Representative Town Meeting in the near future, together with a petition of more than 800 names supporting the measure.

“From other towns that have passed the ordinance, we know it’s not going to harm retailers or be detrimental to them,” said BYO Branford member Meg Kilgore. “That’s what we want to get across.”

The group, she said, “is here to educate and motivate citizens and assist merchants toward becoming plastic-bag free.”

For Kilgore, limiting the use of plastic bags is crucial not only for Branford but for the planet.

“The largest contributor of plastic pollution in oceans is single-use plastic bags,” she said. “Sixty-thousand bags are used every five seconds. On average, people use a bag for 12 minutes and it takes hundreds of years to decompose. Only 1 to 3 percent of those are recycled.”

The impact the bags make is profound, according to Kilgore, and not just in oceans.

“They clog storm drains and litter the landscape,” she said. “They get tangled in trees. If nothing else, they’re an eyesore in our beautiful town.”

Further, Long Island Soundkeeper Bill Lucey said, “they end up in the Sound, where they’re a death sentence for birds, sea turtles and fish that get ensnared in them or mistake them for jellyfish, ingest them and die from intestinal blockage.”

Westport and Greenwich, as well as 80 cities and towns in Massachusetts, the states of California and Hawaii, and 32 countries, have banned single-use plastic bags. Guilford, Stamford, Norwalk, Newtown, Waterford and Mansfield are working toward encouraging their towns to consider a ban.

Some larger retailers also are making an effort to change the habits of their customers. For example, signs in the Big Y parking lot and emblazoned on its single-use plastic bags encourage shoppers to “join Big Y in our effort to eliminate single use and paper bags” and “Go Green,” and the reusable bags available to purchase for $1 at every register.

As a possible result, more and more shoppers are bringing their own bags, said one cashier who asked not to be named.

“It’ll just be a matter of learning to live without them,” he said. “I can do that.”

⏩ For more information about BYO Branford, visit BYO Branford on Facebook or email byobranford@gmail.com.

Lisa Reisman / For Hearst Connecticut Media Members of BYO Branford, from left, Kate Galambos, Meg Kilgore, Dave Schneider, Marge Schneider, and Richard Hill, along with Reverie Kitchen owner and chef Diana Staley (second from right).