“There’s no reason why single-use plastic bags need to be a part of our daily lives,” said Kirstie Pecci, Director of the Zero Waste program at CLF. “Most bags end up filling our landfills, littering our communities and waters, and polluting our air when burned up in incinerators.”
It’s time to take New England’s work reducing plastic pollution to the next level. CLF’s Zero Waste Project is launching our campaign to ban single-use plastic bags in all six New England states to create less pollution, cleaner coastlines, and healthier communities for all.
“There’s no reason why single-use plastic bags need to be a part of our daily lives,” said Kirstie Pecci, Director of the Zero Waste program at CLF. “Most bags end up filling our landfills, littering our communities and waters, and polluting our air when burned up in incinerators. The citywide ban in Boston is a good start, and we must also ensure that any ban does not burden our elderly or low-income neighbors. We have a real opportunity to end this waste and pollution throughout New England and we must act now.”
“Plastic bags are pervasive in the environment. They litter our communities, they blow around,” she said. “They fall apart eventually and those little bits of plastic, those microplastics, are then in our soil, in our freshwater, in our oceans.”
”Plastics create unsightly litter on land and are deadly in our oceans,” said Amy Moses, Vice President and Director of CLF Rhode Island. “Single-use plastics are made from fossil fuels and pollute our environment at every stage of their manufacture, use and disposal. We can’t recycle our way out of this problem. Rhode Island needs to ban these materials, and this task force is an important step in the right direction.”
The Global Climate Action Summit is underway in San Francisco, California. Leaders from across the country – including CLF’s President, Bradley Campbell – and the globe have gathered to exchange ideas about how we can address the most pressing issue of our time: climate change. The Summit is also challenging cities and towns around the… Continue reading Five Ways Cities and Towns Can Slash Trash and Fight Climate Change
Affordable composting has arrived in Lawrence, Massachusetts. A pilot program spearheaded by local groups and CLF gives residents of the Union Crossing/Duck Mill building an easy way to get their food scraps out of landfills and turned into rich soil.
The Massachusetts Legislative Session is over, and CLF has our recap of the good, the bad, and the “meh” from the last two years of work by our elected officials.
CLF’s Zero Waste program has identified eight New England landfills that want dangerous expansions, a surefire way to increase the pollution they emit into the air, soil, and water. We’re working to stop them from expanding.
Governor Raimondo’s “Task Force to Tackle Plastics” is a good start for the state to start taking on plastic pollution. But to really face the problem head-on, Rhode Island must ban single-use plastics and push the state closer to Zero Waste.
