PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia’s ban on single-use plastic bags was implemented more than two years ago. However, complaints have surfaced that several food trucks in the city were not in compliance with the ordinance.
The bag ban, passed by City Council in 2019, prohibits businesses from using single-use plastic bags and non-recycled content paper bags. The city began enforcing it on April 1, 2022.
PennEnvironment Research and Policy Center surveyed 25 food trucks and carts throughout the city on what types of bags they were using. Officials say the results were stark.
Twenty-one vendors were still using single-use plastic bags, three used paper bags and one vendor didn’t give any bags to customers.
“We were hearing about it as a general issue, so we wanted to get as many different types [of food trucks] as we could in a bunch of different areas and get sort of a quick survey of what the picture was with food trucks around the city,” said Faran Savitz, a zero-waste advocate at PennEnvironment.
“Plastic never truly goes away,” Savitz explained. “It just sort of breaks into tinier and tinier pieces of plastic called microplastics, which are in our air, in our drinking water, animals eat them, we consume them, and they carry a bunch of chemicals that have effects on our health and are super damaging, not just to us, but to our wildlife as well.”
PennEnvironment called on the Department of Licenses and Inspections to take action on the offenders, “to do a top-to-bottom review of their enforcement of food trucks and food carts, to help get them in compliance with the law [and] to better educate them on what is and what isn’t allowed under the city ordinance,” Savitz appealed.
The group is also asking the city to amend and strengthen the law by allowing retailers to charge customers for paper bags, to help with the expense of using paper over plastic, which is much cheaper.
The city urges the public to call 311 to report violations of the plastic bag law.