New York City mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order the other day banning the sale of single-use plastic beverage bottles on both city-owned and leased properties. The order is titled Eliminating Unnecessary Single-Use Plastic Bottles.
As part of the order, city agencies will no longer be allowed to purchase or sell beverages that are packaged in single-use containers.
Pointed out by the mayor, fossil fuels are an integral part of the production process of single-use plastics. They do not biodegrade, they break down into smaller pieces, ending up polluting our waterways and enter our food stream.
de Blasio was quoted as saying:
They are hurting the earth. We don’t need them. Time to get rid of them.
According to the order, they estimate this will eliminate at least 1 million single-use plastic bottles that the city buys every year.
As first reported by The Verge, this may also have wide-ranging effects. The city owns or leases more than 17,000 properties over an area of around 43,000 acres, nearly two times the size of Manhattan. This includes city parks and The Trump Organization’s golf course in Ferry Point Park in the Bronx and two skating rinks in Central Park.
City councilman Ben Kallos introduced two bills in 2018 to stop the city from selling single-use plastic bottles on city property. Now, he is working on the city council to pass legislation and make the ban into law. This would prevent someone from trying to reverse de Blasio’s executive order.
Kallos commented on this new order:
We can change what normal is and get to a more sustainable future. We don’t have a choice because there is a climate emergency and we can show Trump the right way to do it.
Part of the order is the “Development of a Reduction Plan”, by June 30th of 2020 every city agency will need to develop and submit a plan to the mayor’s Office of Contract Services and the mayor’s Office of Sustainability.
The goal of this plan will be to eliminate the unnecessary purchase and sales of single-use plastic beverage bottles by January 1st, 2021. The executive order states; “a single-use plastic beverage bottle refers to a drink, such as water, in a sealed rigid plastic bottle having a capacity of 21 fluid ounces or less.”
Each city agency’s reduction plan will need to include (but not limited to) the following criteria:
- A description of current sales and purchases of single-use beverage bottles on city-owned or leased property.
- A description of the agency’s projects, programs, actions, and policies that they plan to implement to become compliant.
- A description of the steps the agency will take limiting new contract commitments for purchasing single-use plastic beverage bottles.
- A description of new or renewed contracts including concessions agreements contains provisions to limit the purchase or sale of single-use beverage bottles with a time frame for these provisions.
- And a description of accommodations for the “necessary” use or sale of single-use beverage bottles.
This move by the mayor will hopefully encourage people to use refillable beverage containers for their water or other drinks. Hopefully, more cities around the country and the world will implement single-use plastic beverage container bans like this, not just on plastic beverage bottles. Thankfully, a similar law to ban plastic bags in the entire state of New York begins on March 1st, 2020.
Is your bag of bags is getting out of hand? New York State's plastic bag recycling law requires large retailers to take back all types of film plastic for recycling, including single-use plastic bags. Find one near you: https://t.co/NzhIWdsm8t pic.twitter.com/m27o8PVwFz
— NYC Sanitation (@NYCSanitation) December 9, 2019
