Survey: Two-thirds support single-use bag ban in Portsmouth

PORTSMOUTH — Two-thirds of Portsmouth residents who responded to a recent town-sponsored survey said they supported a ban on single-use bags in town.

The Town of Portsmouth recently asked their citizens about their use and disposal of single-use plastic bags, how effective they thought a ban on single-use plastic bags would have on the environment and if they were supportive of the enactment of a ban on single-use plastic bags in town. 

According to a press release issued Tuesday by Richard Talipsky, the town’s director of business development, 678 people responded to the survey that was available online and in hard copy at various places around town. Of the 678, 105 were hard copy submissions.

About half of the respondents (47.5 percent) said they took reusable bags to the grocery store 75 percent of the time or more. When asked the same question for non-grocery stores, nearly half (47.9 percent) said they never took their own bags to the store, according to the press release.

When asked about how they disposed of used bags, over half of respondents (57.7 percent) said they returned their bags to a re-cycle point, while 19.2 percent did not save bags for disposal at all and threw them in the regular trash.

To view the full results of the survey, go here.

The survey will provide a further piece of information to the Town Council when it deliberates on whether to enact a set of town rules and regulations, similar to Newport and Middletown, that may include a ban on some single-use plastic bags.

The survey is part of a larger campaign to engage and educate the public on environmental issues that affect the town. In addition to a town-sponsored plastics and plastic bag workshop on Nov. 9, it has developed a Plastics and Plastic Bags informational page on the town website (www.portsmoutri.com).

The town also recently approved a pay-as-you-throw system at its transfer station where special user-purchased bags are required for regular trash in an effort to increase the town’s recycling rate by incentivizing the separating of recyclables (collected free of charge) from regular trash.