 Please join us. Good morning, Madam Chair and committee. Hey, I'm up. So thank you for asking us in today, and we appreciate the chance to testify before you in this committee. I'm here today representing the Raul and County delegation. And as seen on the screen, I had sent a letter to your committee in the early part of April concerning the slate industry in the southwestern of the county, and the value that that industry has toward the economic output of the county and the state. There are folks here, and you may or may not hear from all of them today, from the various towns representing, officially representing the towns who can talk to you about the economic impact. We understand that the committee has some concerns with the slate industry. And we also, the county delegation also understands that there's I'm hoping that we can come to some sort of an agreement amongst the committee and the industry that accomplishes the goals of the committee, but yet takes into consideration the industry and the folks in that family, basically a family owned industry in Iran that actually has a worldwide impact. The everybody's talked about a grandfather clause. I think maybe we should. I don't want to talk about that today, but I think there's a way to talk about that. And my letter gives you several bullet points, and I'm not sure I won't take up a lot of your time today because I think it's more important that you hear from the groups of folks that are here. But the last paragraph of the letter, and I think we'll scroll down to that, I think would be helpful if the committee would consider setting up an off-session working group with a legislator from the area, obviously something for your committee, and that represented us in the industry to come to some sort of an agreement of what's doable, possible, and acceptable to everybody in this conversation. And I understand that you may not get the bill out this year. So that might be helpful to be able to do. I don't know the mechanics of doing a working group without having legislation to form it, but that's why I'm sitting on this end of the table. I think I also just need to volunteer for some of our work. You know what? I do have a volunteer for that from that district. Oh, all right. His name might be Representative Hell. But I would be helpful to have glad to do whatever I would be assigned to do. Should I be involved in that? Right, so I think for you and also our guests, I would just say that what the committee has decided to do is to ask the NRB to convene that conversation. And it's great to know that you support that effort to kind of work over the summer, come to some resolution, and we support it too. So we're going to be asking the NRB to do that. Take the lead and coordinate. And I think you'll hear a little bit from the folks today about their concerns. I have a concern, personally, about what is a normal quarry and what does it mean to be dormant? Why is it dormant? You may have not heard this before. What type of regulations are necessary? What type of regulations do we have currently in place? And for me, what is a quarry called? What constitutes a quarry called? And I think that's an important question that maybe the working group will have to delve into over the summer. But also, in some of my conversations I've had around the building and with these folks is I think there's some education to do amongst the, how do I say this? Can't say it. Can't say it. Among the people selling real estate that they understand what the responsibilities are to themselves in knowing what a dormant quarry is and what can happen, what could happen with a dormant quarry if you're selling a piece of property next to it. And I also understand that title searches typically only go back 40 years. Some of these quarries have been dormant, not used in the column dormant, not used for over 40 years. So that's something that maybe the working group could also address. So with that, Madam Chair, I will go and do a land swap in my committee this morning and thank you for having me here. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Thank you. We need a new air handling system. Let's see. Yeah, right. Thanks for making that, wait, could you come back? Oh, we want to see engineering students. Have you actually talked to the air handling guys? Yeah, yeah, yesterday. Oh yeah. Yeah, we're gonna circle back with you all. Yeah, good, good, we look forward to that. Let's wait and see if we can come on. Yeah. Okay, great, we have Chris Smith up next. And we have two of you on, we're gonna give you the full half an hour, and then we had a request from one other to, so keeping in mind that we have 15, 25 more minutes. Understood, thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee for the opportunity to address you today. My name is Chris Smith. I work at New England Slate in Pulton, New Vermont. And I speak this morning on behalf of many of the Slate producers in Western Rulton County. Slates, as you know, Slates played a tremendous role in the social and economic history of our region. The industry employed thousands and thousands of people during the late 1800s and early 1900s drawing immigrants from across Europe. Today, between 300 and 400 people work directly with the Slate industry. And with few exceptions, we are a small family around operations. We're not huge multinational corporations. The industry generates an estimated $40 million a year in sales. Almost all that comes from outside the state of Vermont. So we're bringing in fresh dollars into the Vermont economy. Vermont produces some of the highest quality Slate in the world from the unique range of natural colors. It is a 100% all-natural real stone. It's still split one piece at a time by hand. My hard-working independent minded folks. Roofing Slate lasts over 100 years. A stark contrast to asphalt shingles or synthetic Slates made from petroleum products which end up in the landfill after 25 or 30 years. So in many ways, it's a very, very green product. We're currently doing a job in New Hampshire right now where the original Slate was installed in 1876. It's being removed because the nail is rusted. And 80% of the Slate is still usable after that lifespan. So it's a very long-lived, very natural product. Can be used for flooring and wall-cladding structural pieces and more. So just like maple syrup and Ben and Jerry's, Vermont is known for its world-class all-natural handcrafted Slate and stone products. It's something we can all be proud of. The Slate Valley runs just over 20 miles from Castleton in the north, the West Pallet in the south. There's only a mile or two wide. It's a very limited geographic extent. There are three to 400 quarry holes on more than 100 parcels that were registered with the District 1 office in the 1990s, as you're aware. This registration allowed quarries that were in existence prior to Act 250 to continue operating or to be held and reserved for future operations. Families and businesses have invested in these mineral assets. In many cases, quarries are considered a retirement plan, a nest egg, an inheritance that gets passed down from generation to generation. So members of the Slate production community feel that changes to Act 250 that are in the proposed draft legislation would be severely detrimental to our business, to our industry, our local economy, and our communities. Recently, the announced closing of Green Mountain College in Pultney spurred a series of public meetings about the economic future of Western Roland County. Rightfully, much of the discussion focused on bringing new jobs, new economic drivers to the region. I suggest that we should also be looking at ways to protect and develop the few industries we already have. The working landscape of farming, forestry, and stone products is a critical part of our state, and it should not be regulated out of existence. Attracting remote workers is certainly a worthy goal, but Vermont needs a diverse economy to support its future health. Changes to Act 250's treatment of the Slate industry may be appropriate, but they should be thoughtful and deliberate. It was our collective challenge to find that critical balance of economic and environmental consideration. To that end, my colleagues and I were discouraged by some of the language taken in the draft legislation, but we're very encouraged by the draft letter of April 5th, requesting the formation of a stakeholder group. We welcome the opportunity to address the common goals of the region, the local process. We are optimistic that the concerns of neighbors can be addressed while still supporting the small businesses that form the fabric of our communities. While change is difficult, the proposed process and the proposed process is unfamiliar, where a hopeful, the stakeholder group approach will yield the best possible results for all the parties involved. In closing, I'd like to thank members of this committee, the entire Rutlen County delegation, the representatives from the towns and municipalities around us for all the work on this issue. And we are encouraged by the support of that draft proposal to create a working group and update Act 250 for the Slate industry. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any questions? I have another question. What's the appraised value of a quarry-hielding reserve? It depends on what type of slate is in that quarry and access and many other things. So it's hard to tell. It's a difficult asset to appraise. If I wanted to come to grips with the economic loss, what happened in the event that you lost its exemption, what would I consider that quarry reserve to be one of? So that's a really good question. There could be some geologic testing that could be done to assess the in-ground mineral assets. Well, I'm just going to look and be a little ballpark for your field. Yeah, it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps more. So it depends on the location, the size of the parcel, the type of slate that's in there, but hundreds, thousands upwards. So I guess I would just add that permits don't mean that you're not operating, right? So permit means you're allowed to do what you're doing, but there's a conversation about how it gets done along the way. So I think that's just a reminder that it doesn't, you know, increasing whatever, changing it won't shut it down. Understood, thank you for that. We agree, I think some of the concern is about the uncertainty of that permit process and what the stipulations would be. So I think the working group is a great way to have that conversation and perhaps allay some of those fears. Great, and we share the interesting consistency and predictability of the representative Odie. How many square miles did you say that all the quarries covered? The valley runs about 20 miles north to south and might be roughly two miles wide. So, you know, yeah, one to two miles. And if meanders, the vein of slate is a very discreet geologic formation. So in some areas it bows out, in some areas it pinches in. So, you know, two times 20, 40 square miles would be a rough estimation. Thank you. Would you just tell the two towns on each other? Castleton, in the north. Some would argue Hubbardton is a very northern end of the slate, but for most practical purposes, Castleton in the north on Lake Balmazine down to West Pallet in the south. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Except we have Craig McCrout. Oh, we heard from Craig before. Craig. Yep, okay. Thank you. So I... Welcome back. Thank you. I just don't have much to add to the... You could say your name. I'm sorry, I'm not sure. Sorry, Craig Markrow from Vermont Structural Slate. I don't have a whole lot to add to the PowerPoint presentation that I gave a few weeks ago, but wanted to respond to the letter that I saw discussing or proposing the study period and the study committee and just wanted to respond to that letter today and say that we think it's a good idea. We're always happy to discuss our industry and show people what we do. And we look forward to that dialogue and we think it's a good idea. I do want to thank, on behalf of the industry, the Gretland County delegation for its support and its letter and also the Slate Valley town officials and select boards for its support. And we actually have letters of support from each and every town in the Slate Valley, which I'd like to submit today for the record. And can I ask the town officials and any Gretland County board here to stand up just so you can see? I'm not sure who's here. Yeah, I'm Hal Wilkins, I represent Paulette. I'm Terry Williams, I represent Paulette. Right Nelson, my ancestors were native farmers in the area and stumbled onto Slate and got into the Slate business many, many generations ago. And the planning commission was started by my father. What town are you from? West Paulette, we call it. Started by my father in the 1960s who had a foresight to have sensible planning. They set up an industrial zone with the Slate corvies being in the industrial zone with the intent of everybody knowing about this and that the Slate industry was going to be operating as it was with their industries as well, right, with the movement to that area. And so this isn't, and this was, went through various planning revisions as well as unified bylaws without any opposition from any resident during any of those processes in the well over 50 years now. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Joe Gunter, I'm the town manager out of Fairhaven. Fairhaven? Fairhaven. Great. Mike Jones, the town manager in Kasselow. So I don't have much more to say other than we look forward to the process. And I have a question, how will the makeup of that committee be determined? Well, it's as yet to be determined, I think specifically, so if you have input, now's the time to share it with us. Okay. I don't have any input, I'm just curious how it would be, I mean, it would, I guess obviously it'd be some quarry representation, neighbor representation, town representation. And the NRB will be convening a natural resources. So people directly involved with the issue. Yep. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Oh, and then we have the gentleman who requested to be out. He is. My name is Richard Hilt, and I'm from Greenstone Slate. I also own a Slate Courage, individually, Richard Hilt in New York State. I would like first to point out that I'm very much in favor of a working group. I think there's a lot of misinformation that's been presented by various witnesses, and I think that working with the groups, getting together, actually looking at the ground would certainly take away a lot of the misunderstandings there. I would like to make one little point, it's kind of off the subject, but it was brought up in the last hearing by a couple of witnesses about New York State laws. My quarries and my one quarry in New York is subject to an overall regulation by the state of New York, but it only comes in if you're a massive project. I don't know any slate quarry that has to, in New York State, that has to comply with like reclamation and all of those sorts of things. That's really the big operations that have to do that, and I know it was brought out a couple of times by a couple of witnesses in the last hearing that Vermont's different than New York. Vermont is much more restrictive than New York for four slate quarries. I'm not saying about other operations, but four slate quarries. Unless there's been some change in the legislation just recently that I don't know about, that it's always been that way. That's all I have to say. I think we're gonna have a few questions for you because you can help us understand the New York situation. Representative Squirrel. You said that there was a point at which this regulation that occurs on the New York side. What is that? What is that? It's cubic yards. It's massive amounts of- What's the number? My recollection is it's similar to up around a million cubic yards of a year to be taking on. It's huge. So you said you're subject to it, but you're not because your quarry's not that big? I think if we were to do that, then we would probably have to comply, but at the level that we are and at the level that most quarries in Vermont operate, they wouldn't be. So your quarry in New York is active? It's, once again, it's a reserve quarry. We use it, it's some years we need it and some years we don't. It's, and I think that's another thing that a study group would find that it's, you don't always work all your quarries all the time. So if you don't have reserves, then somewhere down the road, you're gonna be in serious, serious problem and that will then just reverberate in your own business and in the number of employees you have and in the area. And I think that if quarries can't keep their reserves, they really don't have much of anything and I think it's gonna mean massive losses of jobs. It's not gonna happen overnight, but it will because at some point you've gotta go back to your reserves. Representative Morgan. Is your New York quarry near the Vermont border? Yeah, it's right, you know, it's within half mile, mile. What town is that? It's in the gravel. Grandville. I'm gonna follow up a little on that and wondering, we've heard different perspectives on the slate industry in New York, right across the border. Can you give us a sense of the scope and scale of that industry in New York on the New York side? Well, once again, I think it's smaller because the geology is quite different. I've got a geological map back in my office that shows how the slate, it does run over into New York state, it's not nearly as extensive as it is in Vermont and the chemical substance of the slate is different slightly and it has different qualities to it. It makes much better, for example, a flagstone and most of it doesn't make real good roofing material. But it's, there are a few, but almost all the quarries in New York are just worked on a needed basis. But that's the way, that's the quarry business in general, that's, you don't go to one quarry and work your whole life there, you have to work from quarry to quarry to get the material that you need for a particular order because quite, most roofing slate orders are multi-colored and may come from numerous quarries. How much slate does Greenstone extract in a year? How much, I can tell you, a rough state dollar-wise or squares, square-wise? What do you say, John, square-wise? 25,000 squares. About 25,000 squares. There's no correlation to weight. So we take out a square. Yeah, what's a square? Square what? A 10 by 10 area of coverage. What is it in cubic yards? 10 by 10. That's the terminology that you used a lot. Cubic yards. Cubic yards does not apply to us. And unfortunately, you know, you're extracting a stone and I'm John Hill, I run our mine and run our office. So basically a cubic yard is something that I am aggregate would use. We're not aggregate, we're dimensional stone. So a cubic yard of dimensional stone maybe two rocks, you know, make a cubic yard, makes nothing because the stone is no good. Otherwise, you can extract the stone and maybe a 10-foot long stone, a foot thick, divide that area by one quarter inch. That's how much we have to sell. So it's really quite hard to put a number on, you know, like I can extract, you know, four cubic yards and make a square of slate. I make this week I may extract four cubic yards and make a square of slate. Next week I can extract 25 and not make a square because the stone changes. So it's really, we had the officer, you know, hard, excuse me, we had the Act 250 people come down and see what goes on. And they basically in the 90s were like, you guys do this, we do not, we couldn't imagine it. So it's totally foreign to the stone industry compared to aggregate. So I'm kind of being short with you but it's, I don't really have an answer. We would love to have you come down and show you. Okay, a couple more questions representative of the Faebe and then Squirrel. Do you know of any slate quarry that's been depleted? Depleted. Depleted, that's right. Any quarry that's been depleted? Yes. Closed. Closed, no worries. Yeah, we have a quarry that we think is pretty well pleaded, it's pretty rare, but yes, we have one and we, and yes. So it's not common in the industry to mine it out. No, with most the quarries, with changes in technology and changes in business and so forth, the quarries, you know, a lot of the quarries have been gone back and worked, yes. And for, I mentioned about my last testimony, my dad bought some land in the 1960s and I bought it from him and we've all, we've been holding it, we know, we think that there's some pretty good slate there and but we haven't, we've had other quarries that we could work in but those quarries are getting worked down so we are probably going to have to dip into our reserves to keep going in the future. Representative Squirrel. Yeah, I'm going to come back to this cubic yard measurement. I'm not sure what happens in Vermont but I know in New York, I think in order to get permits, depending on what the level of extraction is, it's still based on cubic yards. You have to do that measurement to get the permit. I understand your point that the finished product may not be everything you're extracting but I think from our perspective, it's the total of extraction that's taking place, not necessarily the finished product. Well, that could, well people, that was my point too is that the, to open the criteria for regulation, the doesn't apply to small quarries, doesn't, would probably never apply to a slate quarry like you have in Vermont. The amount is huge and unfortunately I didn't have time to look it up or anything. My understanding is in New York, anything over 750 cubic yards per year requires a permit. I think it's a lot more than 750 cubic yards. Well that's what information I have. No, it's 750 cubic yards is minuscule. I think that's. Yeah, I'll double check. That's the point. That's the information I have. All right, Representative Dolan and then Morning. Good morning. My question is about the byproduct, the mountains or piles and interested to know a couple of things if I may. One is what are the barriers to try to manage those, that byproduct that is the stone that has been accumulating and piling up. Interested to know what the barriers are in terms of crushing or processing or finding another market for that stone product. And then the second question is we too are concerned and care about the long term economic viability of the region, both for the quarry industry, but also for their communities as well. So reclamation is often times an important element to ensure that the landscape is well managed to attract businesses, attract families and help to ensure the vitality of the region. So interested to know and perhaps this will be a topic of the working group, how your perspective is and how to provide some degree of reclamation to help support the long term viability of the region. So the two questions are what's one of the barriers on terms of managing the stone material that's the byproduct of quarrying. And the second is the degree to which some reclamation will help ensure or support the economic vitality of your response to that. Well, I think the, to answer your first question, I think the barrier is transportation. I don't think there, this is my personal opinion. I don't think that there would be any, you're talking about the waste matter. If we were closer, 100 miles closer to a major metropolitan area, I think all that stuff would be gone. I mean, it's all very usable material. Right now it's just not, it's just too expensive to get it to the market. And, you know, but we're seeing it, the market grow and there have been some, there have been some plans to get the crushed stone, to crush it and sell it in major areas. The reclamation, I was talking to the, we had a site visit by the Army Corps of Engineers and we were talking about reclamation and of course they're thinking this stuff out. They haven't thought this out completely. So I don't want to put words there now. But they were saying that these holes with this water in them could well be a tremendous asset in the future. And they haven't come to any real conclusion of that but I think they're thinking it over that maybe it's not a good idea to start refilling these holes with this beautiful fresh water in it. And most of the water is just pristine, you can drink it. And so I don't know that that, I don't know that that really answers your question. I don't know that there is an answer to your question. I think there's kind of an assumption that maybe the slag piles are hurt the area. Tourist-wise, I don't know. One of our biggest draws in the area is the Slate Museum, the Slate Valley Museum. And tours around to these old slag companies. I know in Europe I've been in Wales and they have, that's a massive industry over there. The quarries are pretty well worked out in Wales but they have a lot of these reserves there that are in these old quarries there that they, and they have a national, it's the National Museum. We don't get, I'm not complaining about Vermont, Vermont government, we don't get much help down there. We don't get help as far as museums. The towns and everybody do the best they do on the roads. It's not like I've been to Spain. And in Spain the government, first of all I'll back off to the deposits of Slate in Spain are way up in the mountains, up in the northwest corner. And the government of Spain subsidizes roads to those quarries. They subsidize, they subsidize electricity, they put in power plants and so forth. They even build a railroad into their quarries. And I'm more than, I don't think we should expect that and I'm not saying, but we don't get a lot of help. I think there's a lot of help that we could do for our area in the tourist industry using the Slate assets, using the Slate history. And if I would suggest anybody that's really interested to go down to the Slate Valley Museum, it's in New York. All right. We have to wrap up. I lost that. It's been my question. It's been answered. So one final question, Representative McCullough. This actually is for Craig. And I didn't, I may have missed, but Craig is the representative here from the town of Pollock? Yes. Yes. Yes. And had they identified themselves as Pollock? Pollock. Yes, Pollock. Yeah, you did. Pollock. Pollock. I met Green Mountain College and told me. Yep. Yep. Yep, he's here. Yep. Yep. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all for coming in. Yes. I'm doing some quick math. So we use, we would track 45,000 tons. So the record remind us of your? I'm Jonathan Hill, Greenstone Slate. And we probably the largest producer of roofing slate products, not structural, not flooring, just roofing. And that's 45,000 tons a year. Oh, thank you. And then there was one more. Craig, did you have your final? No. Kurt McCormick was, used to be chair of this committee. Can you say for the record your name, please? My name is Charles Brown, Brown's Courage Slate. Kurt McCormick chaired this committee years ago and when they did the last study committee. And when it passed, when he brought it back, looking democratic, next they had, they came down and did it all. And when they brought it back and put it together, the build together, of which we are going under, that the roadmap that they made for us back then, they voted the past in the House 147 to three and in the Senate 29 to one, and then Governor Dean signed it. So Kurt McCormick, I believe he's still in the House. Now, I think it would be very good for your committee to bring him in and let him talk to you and explain to everything that they did because that was a 12 to 18 month study that they did. Great, thank you. We're moving on to the next item on our agenda, but thank you all so much for coming in. We are shifting gears to S-113, Laura gave everybody more copies yesterday, so we hope you still have it. And Michael's going to walk us through the bill. We're going to hear from a lot of witnesses this week on this bill, so get ready. Get ready. Y'all into your seats. Fair warning, I think there's 16 of them already on the list. Does that begin? Yes. This is Michael Gray with Ledge Council. I'm going to do a walkthrough of S-113. Do you all have the As-Pass version? Yes, we do. As-Pass, but it's in there. Okay. So this would add a new chapter, sub-chapter of law to tend to say chapter 159, the chapter related to waste management in the state. The new chapter would relate to single-use carry-out bags, expanded polystyrene food service products, and single-use plastic straws. The key components of this bill really are the definitions. They effectively set who is subject to the requirements and what is subject to the requirements. The first key definition is carry-out bag. It's a bag provided by a store or food and service establishment to a customer at the point of sale, and it's not a pharmacy bag. So a store is later defined on page four. As a grocery store supermarket convenience store, a liquor store, a drive-in or pharmacy drug store, or other retail establishment that has over 1,000 square feet of retail space. So this requirement applies to those stores with 1,000 square feet of retail space. And it's my understanding that comes because of a, is that from another state's model? The other jurisdictions use that threshold, yes. But otherwise it's, I mean, we know why they chose that. It's basically to draw a line at big versus small. Yeah, yeah, just a clarification. So 1,000 feet or less, this does not apply. Whenever the requirements address a store or food service, a store, it does not apply. Okay, then the definition of food service establishment is included, but it just cross references the existing definition in 18 VSA 4301. And those are basically entities that prepare, serve and sell food to the public. So stores, 1,000 feet or more of retail space, and then people who prepare, sell and food to the public are subject to the carryout ban. And then you get a definition of expanding polystyrene. I'm not gonna go through this, but effectively it's Styrofoam. That's the brand name for what expanded polystyrene is. Then you see what an expanded polystyrene food service product is. Can I just ask, is expanded, the definition of expanded polystyrene? Also from other states or where did that come from? That's from Maryland. It's a product made of expanded polystyrene that is used for selling or providing food or beverages that is attended by the manufacturer to be used once for eating or generally recognized by the public as an item to be discarded after one is used. It includes food containers, plates, hot and cold beverages, trays, gardens for pegs and other food. It does not include food or beverages that have been packaged and expanded polystyrene outside the state before receipt by a food service establishment or store. A product made of expanded polystyrene that is used to package raw, uncooked or put your meat, fish, poultry or food. And non-phone polystyrene food service products. We already went through the definition of food service establishment, the definition of plastic. This is the scientific definition of the synthetic material made from a few monomers through chemical reactions to create a polymer chain that can be molded or extruded at high heat in the various solid forms. Then you get reusable carry-out bag. It's a carry-out bag that's specifically designed and manufactured for multiple reuse and that is made of cloth or other machine washable fabric that has handles. That is a non-woven polypropylene bag that has handles. It's a durable plastic bag that has handles and at least 2.25 mils thick or made of paper or other material that is not plastic has handles and has a thickness of 2.25 mils. So a mil is one 1,000th of an inch. And I would like to note that sub D there was added basically in a floor amendment. There might be some issues about whether a paper bag is a reusable bag. In other jurisdictions, reusable bag is often defined by the number of uses it has. For example, up to 125 uses. And so the question is would paper bag really be appropriate under the reusable definition? Then you get to the definition of single use paper bag. It's a carry-out bag made of paper or other material that is not plastic that has a thickness of less than 2.25 mils and that is not a reusable grocery bag. Single use plastic carry-out bag means a carry-out bag made of plastic that has a thickness of less than 2.25 mils and so remember that's the threshold. If you're under 2.25 mils, that is the threshold for how you are going to be regulated. Then there's the definition of single use plastic straw. A tube made of plastic that is used to transfer liquid from the container to the mouth of a person drinking the liquid designed and intended to be used only once. Generally, we're recognized by the public as an item that is to be discarded after one use. We already went through the definition of store. Then you get to page four view section 66910. A food, a store or food service establishment which I'll not provide a single use plastic carry-out bag to a customer. So a thousand foot or more retail establishment or somebody providing an entity providing food which I'll not provide a single use plastic carry-out bag so something that's 2.25 mils or less and is designed for one use and is provided at the point of sale and that is what the prohibition is on. The single use paper carry-out bag, a store or food service establishment may provide a single use paper carry-out bag at the point of sale if the single use paper carry-out bag is provided to the consumer for a charge of not less than five cents per bag. So to stop right there, this provision is included because there was testimony and some evidence that when jurisdictions ban single use plastic bags and don't have a fee on paper bags, it just shifts consumer choice to those single use paper bags and therefore doesn't have a significant effect on solid waste reduction and it doesn't drive the consumer to use a reusable bag. So that's why it's there. It was 10 cents as it came out of the Senate Natural Resources Committee. There was a floor amendment to make it five. Many jurisdictions have 10, some have five. Some jurisdictions exempt certain individuals such as people receiving SNAP or WIC and so there's some consideration there. And then on page four, so be all monies collected by a store or food service establishment under this section for provision of a single use to carry out paper bags shall be retained by the store or food service establishment. So that is basically an incentive for the food service establishment to provide these bags and to effectively help cover the costs that they would have in providing the bags. People have questioned why and whether you can mandate that they keep the fee. So basically this is a regulatory fee. It's not an administrative fee, a feed up to pay for the cost of a program. It's a regulatory fee and incentive or a disincentive fee. Another regulatory fee that you can think of is the wetlands permitting fee. It's a 75 cent per square foot fee that is not related to the administrative services provided by A&R and is in part a disincentive fee or regulatory fee. This is a regulatory fee and in other jurisdictions, namely California, when this provision was challenged, the courts have said the regulator can delegate who gets to collect the fee and the disposition of that regulatory fee. So that's what you were doing here. What was that like? Yes, representative Lefebvre. If I were a retailer and chose not to charge anyone for the payment bag of one request, would I be violating the law? Yes. I'm obligated under this bill now. Well, it has to be a single use paper bag. So one that's under 2.25 mils as the system starts right now. Wait, the paper thickness is the same as the plastic one? Okay. Representative Odie. The last sentence you said, it's not administrative fee and the courts have won. The courts have said, namely in California, that when this provision was challenged, that the state could delegate an entity to collect that regulatory fee, effectively delegating the responsibility for making them effectively an actor for the state and then can direct the disposition of that fee. Page 4694, single use plastic straws. Food service establishment shall not sell or provide a single use plastic straw to a customer except that a food service establishment shall provide a single use plastic straw to a person on which bus. Should we move on? Thank you. Representative Odie, we're going to try to focus on understanding the bill. Okay. Then in page 4695, this is expanded polystyrene food service products of person and you may want to re-book at whether it should say a food service establishment or store. But a person shall not sell or offer for sale in the state an expanded polystyrene food service product. A store or food service establishment shall not sell or provide food or beverages in an expanded polystyrene food service product. This section shall not prohibit a person from storing or packaging a food or beverage in an expanded polystyrene food service product for distribution out of the state. Why does it say person? You know, that question came up on the Senate floor and it really was, they wanted that provision about sale to be broader than food service establishments or stores. But then it kind of creates a little bit of confusion in the civil penalties provision where it says a person who violates the requirements. And there are questions like, well, if I'm the person that gives out the straw, the teenager working in the summer, am I the one that gets the penalty? So I think there could be some clarity either provided to the expanded polystyrene provision or the civil penalty provision. So if you want to say a person, you want the sale provision for expanded polystyrene to be broad and the penalty for that to be a person, I think you might want to work through some of that language. But otherwise, the requirements are on stores and food services establishments. For the bags. For the bags and the straws. Thank you. So then person, in some C here is not, other person in other arenas means companies. There is no definition in person so the default definition in person would apply from Title I and it is pretty much a legal entity, you can think of. It's a legal entity. And not a human. No, it isn't human. It's any, any. Including. Correct. Okay. That takes you to page five, 6696, the civil penalties. Person who violates the requirements shall receive a written warning for a first offense. So first offense is no, no violation shall be subject to a civil penalty of $25 for a second offense and be subject to a civil penalty of $100 for a third or subsequent offense. For purposes of enforcement and offense shall be each day a person is violating the requirement of this chapter. Should I move on? So there's rulemaking authority that A&R would have to adopt rules to implement the requirements of the sub chapter. And then you get to section two. But before I get to section two there are a couple of things that I just wanna reference. First, there are a lot of municipalities out there that have bagged bills as it is. The question of whether or not this should supersede those bagged bills was raised. The Senate wants those jurisdictional ordinances to remain in effect while this section two working group looks at them and how they work. But you're in that and that was their intent, dated on the floor. But there is some uncertainty about when this goes into effect, section one, what happens to all those other municipalities and municipal ordinances and by-laws. Does this supersede them? Is this a minimum? Can municipalities be more strict? Right now it's unclear and that's partly because effectively the chair of Senate Natural wanted this working group to look at the different examples out there and see how they work. So you either answer that way as the Senate did or you look potentially to clarify how this applies to those municipal jurisdictions that have a by-law or an ordinance regulating, see what we're scaring out that. Okay. There is one other issue that you are going to hear from your colleagues and your constituents. It's going to be about every scenario, about every type of bag, right? It's already started. What about the candy bag? What about the produce bag? What about the dry cleaner bag? Right? What about the bag that my newspaper is delivered in? Actual question because one of the senators was concerned that he wouldn't have a bag to walk his dog with. So it's like there you're going to get all of those. The Senate committee's position was that the bag provided at the point of sale, right? At the point of sale, at the register. But they did provide a provision that exact exemption for a pharmacy bag because when you get your pharmaceuticals, it's often at the register and so they wanted to be clear that that bag was not subject to this provision. But in other jurisdictions, the exemptions are more specific. Produce bags, dry cleaning bags. There are other examples. So you either take the position that it's at the point of sale, at the register, or you will, we may want to look at some more specific exemptions. Thank you. Can I just, what are the rules that are anticipated being needed for this implementation? So in those jurisdictions that have adopted it, I'm thinking of a similar version like D.C., Austin, some of the California municipalities. They found that they needed to address some specific details about certain types of bags. Exemptions, things of that nature. So the rulemaking has been needed in some of the other jurisdictions. Thank you. I'm gonna hold, thank you. Okay, thanks. I have a question. What about mobile? Gas speed. The definition of food service establishment includes those? No. Just check if it could be, stay sure. Mobile trucks like that, food trucks. So one of the interesting things about the definition of food service establishment, the statutory definition is not the same as the regulatory definition. And so the Department of Health who regulates food service establishment has made some distinctions. And it's largely around those places like grocery stores, where you have food, cold, and bulk, but then you have the sandwich area, or fried chicken area, or bakery area. And so they've made a distinction where the food is served for immediate consumption that that's the food service establishment and not the entire, the entire full retail supermarket. And so there's distinctions that have been made at a regulatory level about what's the food service establishment and what if not. Is that set us up for inherent conflicts in this bill? No, I don't think so because the way that DOH does it, and you could incorporate the DOH regulatory, the rule definition of food service establishment. But I think the way that it's where the food is provided for immediate consumption or takeaway. And then you get the single use products working group. The, there are many of the same definitions that were in the regulatory sections. The charge begins on page seven. The single use products working group is created to evaluate current state municipal policy and requirements for management of unwanted single use products. And to recommend to you the general assembly policy requirements that the state should enact to improve statewide management of single use products. Well, no, one second. Give me a second to catch up through the definition, so. So they're going to recommend to you policy requirements that the state should enact to improve statewide management of single use products, divert single use products from disposable landfills and prevent contamination of natural resources. There's a whole membership. There's a member of the Senate, a member of the House, Secretary of Natural Resources, a representative of a materials recovery facility at Merf. Two representatives are from solid waste management entities, a representative from VLCT, a representative of an association or group representing manufacturers or distributors of single use products, a representative of an environmental advocacy group, two representatives of stores or food service establishments. Then you'll see the powers and duties of the group. They'll evaluate the success of existing state municipal requirements for management of single use products. They'll evaluate the availability and utility of compostable single use products. Estimate the cost of the state of the municipalities of management of unwanted single use products. Estimate other costs of management or failure to manage unwanted single use products. They'll summarize the effects on the environment and natural resources and failure to manage them properly. They'll recommend methods or mechanisms for improving the life cycle management of single use products, including whether the state should establish extended producer responsibility requirements for manufacturers, distributors, or brand owners. And then page 10, if extended producer responsibility for single use products are recommended. And that's a typo. It should be subdivision six, not subdivision five. The single use products to be included under the requirements of financial incentive for manufacturers, distributors, owners, et cetera, of single use products to minimize environmental impacts. How to structure requirements for manufacturers, distributors, or brand owners to provide for or finance the collection of single use products, including using the existing infrastructure for collection processing and recycling of products. And an estimate of the cost and benefits of any recommended method or mechanism. The working group gets the administrative, technical, financial, and legal assistance of A&R, the Department of Health, the Office of Legislative Counsel, and Joint Piscal Office. Honored before December 1, 2019, they submit their report to you, the General Assembly, putting their findings and recommendations. They have to call their first meeting on it before July 1, 2019. The group exists until February 1, 2020. People get compensation, including legislators for participation. Does the committee chair would be? No, it didn't. It says the committee shall select a chair from among its members. So then you get to the effective dates. The working group takes effect on passage because it has to meet before July 1, 2019. And the single use products provisions take effect July 1, 2020. So you get the working group to report back next year before all the single use provisions go into effect. You can amend the single use provisions and or address how it supersedes or affects municipal bylaws and ordinances at that time. It appears that five cents on a paper bag seems a small detriment or disincentive. To encourage the use of a piece of a bag. Did, when the Senate took up this issue of 10 cents and then ended up on the four amendment except the five cents, was there any discussion about that? Yes, basically the discussion was whether the fee was high enough to insent a change in behavior or whether the fee was too high for those that could not afford it. So there was concern that 10 cents was too high for low income individuals and that it should be changed to reflect that and that's the position that wants. And did they ever discuss if it were to be at that level should they make it just optional versus mandatory? In committee, when reviewing the proposed amendment there were members of that committee that didn't want to make the change and said that without it being 10 cents there potentially should not be a fee at all. But not to make the five cents discretionary. I'm curious about the 2.25 and why not just ban all single use point of sale plastic items? How did they get to that number? It's the threshold that's used in other states. Looking at California right now, state-wide, 2.25 million. Is there an easy example of the line in the sand? I don't have it with me but there's like a gauge document that shows like this is what your typical bag is. This is your neck size and I can get you that to give you. So you think we might be incentivizing thicker bags? It's your incentivizing reusable bags, yes. And the question becomes and that this is a question that's risen in other jurisdictions, whether or not certain bags really are single use but they exceed the 2.25 mils. I can't remember which town in Massachusetts it was that set it at like five mils. To disincent that kind of trying to manipulate the mill threshold. But at the same time you're not gonna be able to find a bag that's not a reusable bag. That's more than 2.25 mils. There aren't that many people that manufacture that type of bag. That type of bag, that's greater than 2.25 and that is not a reusable bag. It is not a reusable bag. So they manufacture. Go ahead, Representative McCullough. Thank you, this Lexie of Batman. You'll hear from all the interested parties about whether or not that's the appropriate threshold. Yeah, of course. Thank you. Representative Bates and then Odie. So page seven, number 10. I am totally lost at what single use disposable plastic food service where is and get that printed materials. I thought, isn't this just for bag straws and polystyrene? The first section is, that's the regulations, the prohibitions. The second section is a working group and they're gonna be looking at a broader universe of single use products and they're gonna recommend to the general assembly potential policy or requirements. And so there are jurisdictions that do regulate the single use food service wear, forks, knives, bowls, et cetera. And then printed material is a significant component of the recycling stream. And there's not, after national sword in China, there's not a lot of options for management of it and Kathy James, since here, she can talk to you more about that. And so one of the purposes of this working group is to look at those types of products and recommend ways that they can be better managed to avoid their environmental and other issues. Thank you. Representative Odie. So I'm looking at page four line, how long is the line? It's under 6694 and it includes service establishments shall provide a single use plastic straw to a person on request. Well, did they say it was added to plastic? Why is it required for all eternity till this law changes? Plastic straws being made. So is it that some people have to have plastic for their disability or? The original language was to a person upon request if they have a medical condition or disability and in other jurisdictions and the general conversation around that is a yes, some people do because of their condition or need a straw and that a metal straw is not inappropriate and they may not have a reusable straw with them. And so a plastic bendable straw is the best a combination for certain persons and that if you have the criteria being based on the fact that the person has a medical condition or disability, you basically put the onus on both the retailer and the food service establishment I should say to determine do I have to make a judgment does this person have a medical disability or you put the onus on the person requesting it to prove they have a medical disability and that is not proper accommodation in either instance and so that is the kind of the debate there. And then you have other considerations in some jurisdictions you can get a straw upon request for only for the number of beverages that you purchased and so you may have seen this in Tampa they had something like this and a guy came up and bought a beverage and he got a straw and he wanted another straw and the person wouldn't give it to him so they got into a fist fight about it at the cash register about whether or not he could have a second straw. And so there's different ways that jurisdictions have looked at that issue but the best way to, according to the Senate to accommodate the persons with conditions and to avoid the putting the onus on either the food service establishment or the person with the request has to just say that it's provided upon request. I get that, provided upon request but why does it have to be plastic why can't it be straw provided upon request? You could do that. You might get some testimony that it has to be a straw that is appropriate to accommodate the person. We can pursue that, Carol, it's a great question. Other questions? Thank you, Michael. All right, committee, will we have more breaks if people could come back on time better? So we have seven minutes. You have to be back by 10.30. 40 seconds. Doctor the chair. That's just like, you have to do that. Don't you want to know about all of the staff? Did she have a Western? Yeah, we don't know about that. We are going to call our meeting to order. How are you? I'm good. Kathy Jamison. Well, thank you, Mom. Forward. Classes. No walking in, welcome. Thank you for having me for the record. I'm Kathy Jamison, I'm the solid waste program manager at A&R. And thank you for allowing me to come and testify on S113. So I'd like to start off by saying the administration's position on this bill is neutral, but I'm here today to share with you some background information and factual information about plastic bags specifically, single use plastics in general, and the recycling markets and where that might be heading. So if I may start with single use plastic bags and you see that in S113 and targeting and would ban the use of the single use plastic bags and might say, you know why, how did we get there? And that originally many countries and then counties and cities within the United States targeted single use plastic bags originally as a litter issue. And then a marine litter issue specifically or aquatic where it was getting on beaches, it was unsightly, it was clogging storm drains, and they took actions, you know, originally for that. Classics though and single use plastics, and you'll hear testimony this week about single use plastics, how we are becoming more knowledgeable about their potential ecosystem impacts. People are targeting single use plastics because of a resource issue, the amount of plastic waste that's generated, and how we can try to conserve our resources and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by maybe making different choices with respect to single use items. You hear a lot of discussion about the resources and what's called a life cycle analysis, and I'd like to share just a little bit of information about that if I may. And so those analysis look at environmental impact of a product from the beginning of gathering up the inputs to manufacturing that product to the production of the product, the use of the product, and then their proper management when the consumer's done with the product. And so they call that the over the life of the product. And with respect to bags, single use bags take up more resources compared to a durable bag when the durable bag is used repeatedly. So if you just used each bag once, like a single use bag once, and a durable bag just once, then the single bag would win because it's thinner, a lot less material and whatnot, but with the use and reuse of durable bags and they are produced in the impactor so that they are stronger and can be used repeatedly, then the durable bag wins. So you'll hear some trade off there and discussion about that. The one important thing, and if you only remember one thing if my test one is gonna be this, okay? Yeah, listen. That these life cycle analysis only look at the impacts from proper management at the end of life of these materials. What you're going to hear and why many counties, cities and countries have taken an action is these single use products are not being properly managed at their end of the life. So they are getting into the environment. They are causing problems with aquatic wildlife and potentially even getting into our food chain. All of those negative environmental impacts when they're improperly managed are not part of the traditional life cycle analysis. And so that's why we are seeing many government entities taking action on single use products. So you'll also hear that it costs a lot environmentally to produce a paper bag. Why are we treating paper bags separately than plastic bags? And it is true that it does take energy to produce a paper bag, but they're very different products and they're made out of different materials. So plastic bags definitely contribute to physical. Let it litter and they don't degrade easily. If a paper bag is out to their environment within a few days, it's gonna degrade and eventually it could be something that could grow plants with paper with plastic. We're finding that it breaks down into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces, but it's still plastic. It's not something that can be readily used for plants and animals. In fact, they're finding that these little small pieces of plastics are being consumed by aquatic life and becoming part ingested and not being able to be properly digested. So plastic bags have been found to disrupt the natural environment and made drainage systems. They pose risks for wildlife. Everyone last year probably saw the picture of the turtle with the straw. So these plastic items are causing impacts. Even with our in Vermont, single use plastic bags causes, they cause problem in our waste stream management. If it goes to the landfill, when the truckload of trash goes in a landfill, it gets put into a large, basically, hole in the landfill. If there are plastic bags that are loose, they can blow away. The landfills are required to have fencing all the way around the perimeter of the landfill and they have staff that weekly or more frequently have to go around picking up any debris that is blown away from where they're trying to keep it contained. So it's a problem at the landfill when it gets disposed. If plastic bags should never go in your blue bin for recycling, if you want to recycle a plastic bag, please take it to a retail store that has a place or a container where you can put it. If it goes into the blue bin, if it goes to the mirrored, they're materials recovery facility. We have one in Williston, another one in Rotlin. If it goes there, it gets tangled up into the equipment. This system has to be shut down and all the plastic filaments in there has to be cut out by an individual. So CSWD informed us in 2017, it took them 780 staff hours that year to clean, film, off, and work equipment. So it is a dangerous job to get in there and cut that out. So it is causing issues in our recycling system and our disposal system and our environment. The one interesting thing is, even though we think we, and we do use a lot of plastic bags, they are small and they only take up a small part of our waste. So they take up about 1% or less of our waste. We know that from our waste composition study. EPA does information or shares information nationally about materials that are managed and they report that only about 5% of plastic bags manufactured are being recycled. So we don't have great recovery for recycling these materials. They're either getting disposed in the landfill or getting out into the environment. So that's kind of background on why these bans are happening and other places, where is it happening? There's at least 65 countries throughout the world that have adopted plastic bag bans. And there are more than 375 U.S. counties and municipalities that have enacted legislation. They either charge fees on the bags or ban on the bags. California was the first statewide program that was adopted I think about a year and a half ago. And more recently, just I think last month, New York passed a statewide legislation on banning plastic bags. California program, they require a 10 cent fee on paper bags that the retailer provides the customer. If the customer doesn't bring a reusable bag. New York's a little bit different. My understanding is that it's up to the county to decide whether or not they pass an ordinance that would require a charge of five cents at the retail level. One of the things I am hearing from folks is that the reason why there's more support this year for statewide program is they want a consistent program throughout the state. And so I think, you know, keeping it at the statewide level has some benefits rather than kind of letting different counties or municipal entities do things differently. There's been attempts to try to do this voluntarily. And California was a really good example of that where many or multiple attempts at either a city or a county level was made. They didn't see any significant progress. And that prompted about 130 cities and counties in California to adopt mandatory programs. And then that led to California adopting a statewide program. With programs that are out there, they have demonstrated to be very effective, not only reducing the number of single use bags that people use, but also to have positive and criminal impact impacts. With San Jose, California, they were having a significant problem with storm drains and they measured after implementation of their program an 89% decrease in having to go and unplug or remove the plastics from the storm drains. And then Montgomery County, Maryland demonstrated or documented a significant reduction in their litter. I think it's 55% reduction in litter once their plastic bag ban went into effect. There are three different types of models that are typically used with these mandatory programs. One model is to just ban the bag. Some entities ban just single use plastic bags. A few have banned both plastics and paper. Some municipal entities or counties or countries just charge a fee for the bags. They don't ban it, but the bag can be available upon a fee. Some elect to do that only for the plastic bags. Some elect to do it for both the plastic and the paper. However, the most common model that's out there is what we call the hybrid model. And that's where they ban the plastic bag and charge a fee in the paper bag. The reason why that's done is it incentivizes that fee will incentivize the consumer to bring their reusable bag. But having a bag available when the consumer either forgets their reusable bag or perhaps they're a tourist and on vacation and they kind of left that habit at home, it provides an easy, low cost effective solution that's a paper product that is easily recyclable that doesn't have necessarily the negative environmental impacts that a plastic bag has. Studies have shown that when people have to pay even just a little bit, it kind of incentivizes behavior. You might remember a few years ago, there were some grocery stores that if you brought your own bag, you get two cents off your, and they kind of phase that out. Studies have shown that when you get a little bit of money back, it doesn't necessarily prompt you, but if you charge that same amount of money, that you'll change your behavior. And don't ask me to explain why that is. So that's what's kind of out there. The range and fees that are typically charged for the paper bag, they range from five cents to 25 cents, but the two most common charges are the five cents and the 10 cents. When California had all of those 130 counties, municipalities adopting ordinances, it was by and large, 10 cents was the most common charge that they had. If you took California out of the equation, and you could look at all the other counties and cities in the US, I have to kind of look at my cheat sheet on this one. Okay, so there's 25 in the United States that charge five cents, and there's 11 that charge 10 cents, and then there's five that have different numbers. 17, 25, two, okay. But so you can see there that either five or 10 is the most commonly used. 10 was really common in California. Five's a little bit more common in other places other than California. And if you want us to do a little bit more research on that, we can pull numbers up. We did have someone kind of looking at different programs and try to track them. Are you finished? I do have some information about recycling and a little bit on polystyrene. Let's let her finish. Yeah. Okay, so with respect to polystyrene, I don't have as much information to share, but that is not easily recycled. And just to know a little bit more about why can something be recycled is you have to be able to collect enough of it in a manner that's reusable in the marketplace and ship it to a place that is willing to use it. And with polystyrene, it is really, really hard because of the life. I mean, the strength of polystyrene is that it's light, but the disadvantage of it, it's hard to collect enough of it to then be able to efficiently ship it to somewhere where it can be used. And it has to be clean. And so you'll hear from people, perhaps this week, that will tell you that right now in Vermont, we don't have the ability to easily recycle polystyrene. And then a few minutes on the recycling markets, if I may. And so what Michael Grady alluded to is that there has been a drastic change in the markets that started in the beginning of 2018. China changed their importation policy on recyclables. With recyclables, we have been accustomed to single screen recycling and sometimes other materials gets in the recyclables and oftentimes too with the processing a little bit of light glass can get in the paper bale, a little bit of paper can get in the glass container. And so there is what we call contamination. And China had been receiving our recyclables, our U.S. recyclables for a long time and manufacturing products and then shipping those products back to us. And they took a strict policy that they wanted to try to develop their own recycling within China to feed their manufacturing. They also wanted to be able to take better higher quality feedstocks for their manufacturing and so they raised the bar. And so that has flooded our U.S. market with our own recyclables and when you flood the market, then the price drops. And so with respect to Vermont that had the most impact on our paper, what we call our mixed paper recyclables because that's what we were shipping to China. So the cost of managing mixed paper has gone up. And nationally we recognize what we need to do and this is not likely to change in China. So we need to change how we're looking at these materials and this is happening in New York too, is to can we have materials manufactured such that they're easier to recycle, that they provide better materials, feedstocks for inputs for manufacturing. In fact, the European Union is ahead of us on this. They've adopted what's called the circular economy where they are working directly with manufacturers so that once the consumer is done with it, it can really feed into manufacturing a new product. That makes, you know, it reduces waste up front. It makes recyclables more valuable and creates less expensive feedstocks for manufacturing. And so we need to invest in our recycling infrastructure not only in Vermont but nationally, but it's challenging right now because the value of our recyclable commodities are at a low point. This is occurring at the same time packaging is changing and so what we're trying to manage is changing and it's becoming more and more harder to recycle materials being used in the marketplace. And so the two of those challenges are prompting other states to really look at how should we change the system. And there are at least three states right now, Washington, Connecticut, and Indiana who are looking at looking toward using a model of extended producer responsibility. And we use that model for managing several of our waste types, material types in Vermont including electronics, paint, batteries, and mercury added products. And those have been demonstrated to be very successful programs in Vermont once we have implemented. And so that's going on and that's why you are seeing in the second section of S-113, the study group looking at that broader group of single screen plastics and the need, you know, should we look at or whether or not Vermont should pursue extended producer responsibility. So, okay, we have time for a couple of questions. Representative McCullough. Two questions. Kathy, when, what states or jurisdictions are you aware of that give a pass on the purchase at the point of sale for a single use paper bag when the customer has a snap or wick? I think that is, okay, California and New York are the only states that have statewide programs and it's in the California law and the New York law, I haven't read all the way through yet. And I don't know if it's in the New York law. Okay, second question. You said 5% of single use plastic bags are recycled based on your actual counts going through. And we understand that's an estimate. I'm wondering how pervasive in that 5% dry cleaner bags are. So the 5% number I get from EPA, so I don't know the answer to that. I will say that it is common for dry cleaning bags to be exempt from plastic bags. To be exempt from other jurisdictions that have put bans on plastic bags, as well as the produce bags. And if you're in a hardware store and you get the little bits of nuts and bolts and you put them in bags. So it's common for those types of bags to be exempted. Absolutely understood. But when, maybe that's a better question for CSWD because they're the ones that actually are pined from there. They see what's coming through. Okay, I will ask. Representative Faith, give us a little more on how the hybrid system works. I like the idea of banning plastic bags just upright and then going with if you needed a bag having a paper bag available. But I'm just wondering is that the way they work the hybrid or not? The hybrid, yes. That the paper is the bag that's available, that the plastic gets banned, not vice versa. And then there's a charge, a fee on that paper bag and that's to incentivize the consumer to bring in the reusable bag. You know, Chicago has a seven cent fee on bags and my son lives there and I visited him and we needed to go to the store and he keeps bags right on his fridge and including a couple of really big paper bags that he reused and sent because he said, Mom, it's seven cents. And so, you know, that fee incentivizes him because he paid seven cents for that paper bag so he's gonna reuse it. Kathy, thank you so much. That was incredibly helpful. Thank you. Next up is Paul Burns. Morning. Morning. For the record, my name is Paul Burns. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, B. Perg. Thank you. And B. Perg, as you may know, is the largest consumer and environmental advocacy organization in Vermont with about 50,000 members across the state. And we have long works, we were created in 1972 and working on solid waste issues and recycling has been kind of in our domain since the earliest days when we were supporting the bottle bill which was also launched in 1972 here in Vermont. And so we have a long history on these issues and I therefore really appreciate the opportunity to be before you today. I have submitted testimony as you see here and some written copies for some folks as well. There are more than a dozen citations in here so there's lots more reading if you all are interested as we go through the testimony here or I'm not gonna just read every line here but we'll be referencing some of these other things as well. But simply put, we organizationally are very supportive of this legislation that you're considering. It takes on what some people call the trifecta of single use plastics that being the single use plastic bags, straws and polystyrene. And so it's an excellent start at addressing this problem of plastics. I'll note that I also made available to you all as members of the committee this National Geographic Magazine Edition from June of last year. And I note it now because they've got the plastic bag featured here in the look of an iceberg because when we talk about dealing with plastic bags and straws and polystyrene, it really is the tip of the iceberg when we're talking about plastics overall. So lots of excellent information some of which I will refer to specifically in that edition. This is an issue that happens to be something that I've worked on personally for a long time as well. It happens that 29 years ago this past February, I was standing in front of a Wegmans grocery store in Syracuse, New York protesting their plastic bag policy and Wegmans kicked me off their property along with others who were protesting this. So this is a nice photo of me representative. I know you'll appreciate that. Handsome guy. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. So 29 years we've been working on this policy and on Monday of this week, Wegmans announced a plan to eliminate plastic bags by the end of this year. Only takes three decades sometimes to win these policies. Wegmans announced this policy in New York State and as you just heard from Kathy Jamies in New York State did pass legislation just quite a month ago to eliminate plastic bags by March of next year. So Wegmans is getting a little bit of a jump on that by eliminating them first in their New York stores before that. But I was happy to see that as kind of my own personal involvement. I'm sure that had something to do with it. So we are hearing an awful lot about the problems of plastic whether it's this national geographic or 60 minutes did an episode on it six or eight weeks ago and it's just in the news an awful lot about the problems of plastics that we're seeing and I note that even Wegmans and their statement which you see there they talk about not only are they reusable bags the best option for the environment but they also hold more groceries without breaking or tearing, requiring fewer bags per shopping trip than paper or plastic bags that marks real progress when it comes to Wegmans. And just below that you see a description from the National Geographic Magazine of the scope of the problem more broadly. According to National Geographic the world has created about 9.2 billion tons of plastics since around 1950 just after World War II. 9.2 billion tons. Most of that plastic 6.9 billion tons has become waste and of that 6.3 billion tons never made it to the recycling bin. What that means is it either ended up in a landfill or an incinerator or out in the environment somewhere. Again, as Kathy James was talking about a lot of this material doesn't end up being properly dealt with at the end of its useful life. And we're talking about single use plastics as is the subject of this bill before you. We're talking about items that usually have a useful life of about 15 minutes or sometimes less. And then they last in our environment for 500 years or more. And that's why it really makes sense it seems to me for you to be focusing on this problem as you are. These kinds of plastics are choking our oceans and spoiling our environment killing wildlife. And if that weren't enough we must also recognize that these plastics are threatening our health as well. You have heard that plastics don't break down in the environment. They are not, they don't exist in nature. Microplastics then are found all over the world. And just as some examples have pulled some recent headlines about where these tiny, tiny bits of plastic are now being found. You may have seen some of these yourself but there's a story from the Guardian about sea salt around the world is contaminated by plastic studies show. So if you've got some sea salt at home you're also pouring little bits of plastic on your food. Plastic fibers found in tap water around the world. So you say, okay maybe I'll use bottled water. The World Health Organization wants to health review after microplastics are found in 90% of bottled water supplies. So it's not just in tap water and bottled water as well which of course you know a lot of bottled water, sorry, comes from a tap someplace. And Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that studies find tiny bits of plastic in beer samples including that in Milwaukee. I don't know that Vermont beer has been tested specifically but don't think you're safe there. And finally from National Public Radio, beer, drinking water and fish, tiny plastic is everywhere. So it's in our food, it's in our water. We cannot avoid being exposed to these microplastics. So I wanted to show you a couple of graphs and these were some of the sources of some of the information that you will also see very similar on I think it's page 55 of the National Geographic Magazine but you'll see much of the same data contained here. The top graph is looking at global primary plastics production. This is production of plastics from about the beginning, 1950 or so to 2015. And it is broken down by industry sector and you're seeing a pretty sharp incline in the quantity of plastics being produced from beginning in 1950 There we had about two million metric tons of plastic resin being created in 1950. Then you see a pretty regular incline there. You see in 1973 there is a dip from the oil crisis and then in 2008 the great recession another significant dip but other than that from an environmental perspective it's a remarkable and concerning upward trend in just the overall quantity of plastics being produced. This next graph shows the quantity of plastics waste generation and the kind of interesting thing in here is if it largely mirrors the top graph of plastics production but there's an even greater quantity of waste when you look at the type of material type of use and that is in packaging. Packaging accounts for just about half of all of the plastics waste that we're seeing being generated today. And when you hear, I believe it was Senator Bray talking about the fact that in the last 15 years or so that's half of all plastics ever made was made in the last 15 years. That means you just look at the line from in this graph 2000 to 2015 and you see that how large a chunk of the overall plastic production that is that's how it outweighs all the rest of the years combined. All right, so I probably don't need to spend a lot more time on the problem there's more information in testimony and you have lots more access to that. So let me get to why we think S-113 is a good idea, a good solution to get at some of these most common types of throwaway plastic. First, the bags, the issue of bags. And you would have heard about what the policy is. We support the policy but I do urge the committee to consider returning to a 10 cent charge on paper bags. And there are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that a 10 cent charge on paper bags is just a more effective incentive to encourage shoppers to bring their own reusable bags to the store. Wegman's noted that that's a transition that needs to happen and there are lots of other places with a very good experience that we can look to. In California for instance, though their statewide law hasn't been in effect all that long, at the city and county level there has been a lot of policies in place for enough time to be evaluated. Consider for instance in Alameda County. In Alameda County this second to last paragraph you see in 2013 the county passed an ordinance similar to the provisions that we have in 113 with respect to bags. According to the analysis from the agency that oversees solid waste management in Alameda County the 69 chain stores there went from using 50 million bags each year down to 10 million total between paper and plastic. That would be a heavier duty plastic and paper that people would be paying 10 cents for there. That's a tremendous reduction. The number of bags overall went from 13 to 8 million in terms of paper bags and then plastic 37 million down to 2 million. And so what's interesting there is I think it demonstrates how well it can work to put a 10 cent charge on paper bags because you might have expected that there would be a much more common just transition over to using paper bags which are still available to everyone but at that 10 cent charge. So people decided not to pay the 10 cents or larger, there are fewer people using paper bags in this county now than there were before the law to begin with even though the single use plastic bags are not available to them. So what is happening is that people are bringing reusable bags at a much higher rate and when they buy one or two items the study finds they leave the store without any bag at all if they didn't bring their own. And so that is working really well. And the senior program manager there identified the 10 cent charge as being key. Her quote is 10 cents charge really affects how consumers behave at the point of sale. Just quickly to note some of the other information from other California communities. There were 151 cities and counties that adopted a single use bag ban ordinance before the statewide law went into effect in California. According to the group California's Against Waste there are lots of information if you care to look for more. I've got the citation here but three points really rose to the top. They eliminated over five billion plastic shopping bags. These are all the counties and cities taken together there in California. Five billion plastic shopping bags per year and all the resulting litter and waste equaling 66 million pounds of plastic. Reduced paper bag consumption by nearly 400 million bags annually. And then there is a climate benefit as well as they reduce by approximately 185,000 metric tons carbon dioxide emissions per year. That's a lot of benefit when you think about these policies just dealing one bag at a time there. So it's a fair question with these exemptions and so forth and it was raised the other day. Does it still work California much bigger than Vermont but you can still bring it down to scale and we're going to see a significant environmental benefit by adopting this policy. By increasing the charge to 10 cents it would also allow the state to use a portion of that money to get more reusable bags into the hands of the people who really need them. In the Senate as you've heard there was concern about the 10 cent charge on paper bags and the hardship that that may pose to some Vermonters. But it seems to me the best answer to that concern is not to lower the charge on single use paper bags to a nickel. Instead we should make more, we should make reusable bags which are far more durable and versatile more easily accessible to everyone. And so you could use a portion of that extra five cents that if you were to add it back in to perhaps have a grant program at the Department of Environmental Conservation where they could work with nonprofits, with food banks, with community action agencies or others who have regular contact with folks maybe lower income Vermonters who if they don't have access to reusable bags now we could get them into their hands. Everything that leaves the food bank could go in a reusable bag for instance. And after a couple of years I think we will have saturated the market enough here so that few people could say they don't have any access to one or perhaps multiple reusable bags. But they are available now. I brought some, everybody's got these things. We've got dozens now, but they last a long time. This is one that Beepirk put out in 2002 still works really well. And there are lots of other examples but I wanted to bring one from California when I was out in California a couple of years ago in a place that already had the policy in place you see how small that they can scrunch down and that you can have these nylon bags. And this is a grocery store that was very proud of it. When they talked about a growth market they were voted the best neighborhood market there and they had a nice little recycling symbol and talk about how great this is and it's a greenbagamerica.com. So it becomes a marketing tool for some of them as well. So, yes. I just want to be sure we have three other witnesses before lunch. I want to make sure you get to your high points that you want us to go away with. Absolutely, so let me move. Thank you. So I would say consider that move to increasing the charge on the paper bags which is our probably number one recommendation for you to consider in terms of a change here and how if you want to talk more about how we could make that work to get more reusable bags out there would be happy to do that. Really the second change that we would suggest from the Senate proposal has to do with the area of the straws and that is exactly what representative Odie was raising earlier. There is a section of that bill in section 6694 which is page four of the legislation that talks about how establishments shall make a single use plastic straw available upon request. And it seems to me that you may want to instead of using the word shall use the word may. And the point there is that establishments must not be prevented from making straws available to people who request them. And that would be a legitimate concern. But since the establishments are not required to make a straw available today it would be an unusual thing if with the passage of this bill for the first time establishments would be required to make a plastic single use straw available to anybody who asks for it. So you could say they may make a plastic straw available or perhaps even better you could say they will make a straw available upon request. And there are lots of examples of straws that are out there now. And I'm just thinking about establishments that make the transition as many already have to paper straws or something else. It would seem unusual again if they had to stock plastic straws for anybody who asked at that time. There are no changes that we propose with respect to the polystyrene provisions here. It's a ban that makes a lot of sense. I will point out that as part of testimony we have offered a decision out of the state of New York New York City that had to do with a proposal there dealing with restriction on polystyrene and it goes through very methodically why it is that it is an appropriate policy to eliminate polystyrene for these kind of food service containers. And that is in the testimony that I'm offering you here. I won't go through it with two major points but it is more toxic than any other kind of plastic. It is not effectively recyclable at all. And if you leave it in the system it can make other items in the recycling stream. The material recovery facility contaminated because it is so light and it crushes and separates so easily that if you're doing paper recycling in the same facility a lot of it gets contaminated with this polystyrene and it really makes a great deal of sense to take it out of the system entirely upfront. As much of it as you can. We support the idea of the working group and I think it's a terrific idea as we look at next steps. Extended producer responsibility is part of that. You're seeing a lot of makers of packaging and even beverage makers now talking about a higher degree of recycled content in their beverage containers. Coca-Cola announced in Australia that by the end of this year 70% of their beverage plastic beverage containers will be made of 100% recycled content plastic. But in the US their plan is only to get to 50% recycled content by the year 2030. Seems to me we could do, it's not a technological problem then. It is a problem of a lack of commitment to do it here so it may take states like ours and others to give them a push in the right direction. 70% where? In Australia. And 50% here? Well 70% of, there's a couple of numbers here. 70% of their bottles will be made of 100% recycled content. So they're saying they can do 100%, they just won't get to all of them. Here it would only be 50% recycled content by the year 2030. So I, there's so much more that can be done there but we, this is a terrific first step. The elements contained in 113, I think the working group just makes an awful lot of sense as we think about next steps for doing that. And if you're gonna have more recycled content you gotta look for clean quality material particularly PET plastic. And for that we would encourage you to be considering an update to the bottle bill as well. And that is some of the recommendations that you find in my testimony as well from plastics experts out there. If you're never gonna get to that level of recycled content without clean recycled plastic material. Thank you. So the number three on your list of requests, return to Tensa, paper bag, straws, the language you propose, and then your last thing is update the bottle bill. Yes, but not as part of this. I would love it if you felt so inclined, Madam Chair, but I've got another place I have an idea for that for you. But it's kind of an example of I think what this committee could be looking at as well. I really appreciate the opportunity to testify. Sure, and I want to make sure if there's any questions that we have a chance. Anyone have questions? Representative McCullough. For California, let's just say California, do they exempt WIC and PETA? No, not for an requirement, they do not. No. Thank you. And the New York, if I may, the New York law, in terms of the five cent charge for paper bags, it's not a statewide charge, what they, that legislation, I don't think anybody would talk about it as a good model, but they allow cities and counties to put a charge on paper bags of five cents, and then they split the five cents, couple cents going to the kind of programs I'm talking about for getting reusable bags into the marketplace, and then several cents going to a state environment fund. Representative Dolan and Odie. Well, just a quick question, good morning. What's your opinion if we're also struggling about trying to find sources of funding for clean water, and if we move this to 10 cents and we retained five cents of it for clean water funding, do you have a reaction to that? Well, there's a nexus between single use plastics and single use products, generally, and water, you know, and water protection. So I think it makes sense, and even if you were to initially use some of this money to get more reusable bags out there, you could, after a year or two, transition over so that all of that went to clean water would be a perfectly sensible place for that, or you could, I mean, it's up to you and your colleagues to make that decision, but I think there is a nexus between clean water and this idea of single use items. It is also true that the bottle bill now has the unclaimed deposits going to clean water, and so any expansion there would expand the amount of money going to clean water, too. Representative Odie. That was exactly my question. Oh, great. Thank you, Paul. Thanks very much. Great line. Yeah. After us. All right, John, thanks. I'm gonna secure the garbage can in my presentation. I'll start out with the note that there are three of you get done before I do it. I'm gonna do an expedited process and try to make it as easy as possible. Okay, one more. My name is John King. I work for Foley Distributing, Vermont's last remaining Vermont-based non-foods distributor. We sell over $1.25 million worth of retail paper bags, retail plastic bags, paper hot cups, expanded phone cups and products, and compostable packaging products. So we provide a neutral position that's neutral and transparent. We do not support bill S-113. We believe the most sustainable thing to do is have a note bag bag, which means no paper bags and no plastic bags. The gentleman before me kindly noted Wegmans and I always look at good things for companies when they start using things. But if you look at the future of grocery business, artificial intelligence is going to be a key. In five years, there won't be any cashiers and you're gonna be able to put your food into a carriage and you're gonna walk your food right out to the car. That's within five years, if not sooner. Walmart, by the end of this year, will have robotic scrubbers cleaning all their floors and all their stores. There's robotic scrubbers to do the scanning of all the retail shelving. Okay, so that's coming down. There's a book that I recommend you read, AI Superpowers. And it'll tell you what's gonna happen in a lot of different segments. I'm gonna break this down to two categories, plastic bags. This is the high D bag, the most cost effective. It's cost about a penny or two pennies that goes in the trash right now, side of the roads, lakes, and things like that. This is a low density bag, primarily used like at city market. And it's about 0.8 mil thick. It is reusable, heavy in the handle. And this goes into trash, okay? This is a reusable bag in a lot of the laws that have been passed in Massachusetts. And I think this bill recommends is a waiver for 2.25 mil, okay? So this is an option for some of those customers that have a lot of walking customers that they're using it. Okay, so on this one here, this is about seven cents. So one to two cents to seven cents. This is about 12 to 13 cents, 2.2 mil. And on this bag it says can be used 125 times. I don't know who said that. I don't know what tests were done. But I know what this bag looks like after a couple of times and it says it can be washed. I recommend all you go get one and try to wash it and see how it goes. So that is what I'm concerned about is if you look at the plastic industry, they're predicting the more use of plastics because people that do use bags and get a waiver 2.25 mil is going to be more weight. When you're a plastic manufacturer, you don't look at bags, you look at weight. That's dollars. I was at Mike Stone, it's Mike's pastry in the North end of Boston, I mean, actually this law, and I bought five canolis. And I got a 2.5 clear bag for five canolis. That's an example of what's going on. You can't make this stuff up. This is, so again, if you look at what is the most common car that's going to be made, it's going to be trucks, pickup trucks. Everybody's driving a pickup truck. If you look at GM and Ford in the last three months, they're going to be producing pickup trucks. What goes in the back of a pickup truck? Bags. Bags, okay, that goes on that, like Champlain. We're going to be going fishing for a day. You're going to have this heavy dude. Where does the plastic bag go? It's going to go in the water. So I think generally people are good. I think they're not intentionally throwing these things away. But that's, when you enact this law at 2.25, you're going to be selling more plastics and they're going to be still going in the same spot. Here's another example of 2.25. This is heavy duty, okay? Paper bags. We've been doing Hunger Mountain for many, many years. We ask a lot of a paper bag. I recommend you all go to Trader Joe's and see what Trader Joe does. So they're California based. They're double bagging, a handle bag. And so I don't know, those stats, when you double bag at a time, that's a lot of bags. Sustainability, when you measure how much it costs environmentally to make a paper bag, it's not a really clean process. It takes a lot of energy. A paper bag machine is 75 feet long, 23 feet wide. It weighs about 25 tons. It's huge, it takes a lot of energy. Not one bag paper bag manufacturer is certified. I sell toilet paper and towels to the state of Vermont. All our products are certified, which means they're green seal certified or eco certified. They have to get audited in these plants to make sure they have the best standards. Find me one paper bag company that has been certified. You're not going to find that. And then most importantly, someone had talked about life cycle in the disruption of recycling. We just can't make this up. We've been sending all our stuff to China for all these years and it makes absolutely zero sense. And all of a sudden, for security reasons, China says, we're not taking your stuff anymore. So all of a sudden we're getting flooded with all this material. And if you look at recycling, and we've developed a closed loop recycling called P3 closed loop. And you can certainly look at it. We have it at Shem Plain. We basically take shredded paper and we bring it to a mill very close by and we sell the product back. That is recycling, okay? So you look at this paper bag, it's really a single use bag. It's not going to be used twice. You can't even use it once. It's so hard. Because a lot of times there's moisture in it. There's no moisture to rips. So a lot of people are not using that twice. This goes in the recycling bin because it says it's recycled. But if you look at what's happening in the state of Amman, we have a waiver right now to July 2019 that all the mixed paper comes a single strain can go into the landfill, okay? And the question that should be asked is where is the mill going to be to take this? Before the newspaper print mills closed in Canada, that's where we should send our stuff. Then we sent it to China. The question is where is this going to go? Is it clean enough? Ideal of manufacturers, the few that are remaining in the New England area, and they can't take a lot of this stuff. So this basically goes in the trash, okay? So that takes care of the paper side. And currently Costco, BJ and Sam's do not provide any bags. I recommend you go and visit that so you can see that yourself. That's going to be the future of all these other retails except for small mom-and-pop stores. That's an issue that needs to be addressed. And this bag is a reusable bag, I think. It's polypropylene. It's made in Vietnam. It's got campus handles, 50 cents. I got this at Hanifords and it charges me 50 cents. And the general manager was at the cashier. And now it's a million dollar store a week and the general manager is at the cashier and I asked him what's going on because I can't get any help. And he says, listen, I'm going to give you two bags. He said in five years, there's not going to be any cashiers. You're going to be putting the stuff in the cart and go right to your car. That's where it's going. That's from the general manager telling me what's going to happen. So this is a reusable bag. It can be cleaned very easily. It's more durable or like the bag that the other gentlemen had shown you. So we're just talking about, if you measure it, you can manage it. If we develop this law and nothing's really ever happening and we're doing more plastics and we don't have the data, we're just saying things to say it's really good. And I think that's something that should be considered. Do the due diligence and to do that in. Expanded polystyrene products. Again, we sell compostable packages. So I'm going to give this really, this is compostable packaging. Most of this product is made in Asia. And when it's compostable, it's going to be certified by BPI and it's going to be made with a form-based PLA product to allow it to break down in certain conditions. Currently, there's only one place in New England and New York that can technically take all commercial packaging for composting. And it's a great start for Vermont. It's green mountain compost. They can take this and they can compost it. Everywhere else, Boston is not a place to take it because it's massive volume. New York City, I don't know where they're going to ship it because when you make a composting facility, it's a tough place to be living next to, especially the higher rent district. So that hasn't been resolved. So basically most of the, I would say 97% of all composting packaging is not getting composted. So composting is going in the trash. What is that, BPI? It's a certification like green-sale certification for the paper side and cleaning chemicals. They go in and they've got to audit the process to ensure that they're meeting, that it breaks down in a commercial-grade composting facility. Green Mountain Compost has done a great job there in meeting those standards and stuff like that. So cups, which is a big, big issue, more so than the straws. The straw gets a lot of attention. So we talked about composting. This is the polystyrene foam. And very light. It's great heat, keeps the heat of product really hot. You look at coffee, you look at any store in Vermont, the number one most profitable category in every store is coffee. So it's important for the sustainability. And when you're selling coffee, heat is really important, especially in larger sizes. So what's great about this product, it's a good price point, it's a great heat insulator, and it can be recycled with the right systems in place. It doesn't go well with single stream. It just doesn't go well with machines. And we're experiencing a lot of issues price-wise when people move from this category to these categories I'll be talking about, you just don't go overnight and open up a new machine. If you look at Dunkin Donuts, they're gonna be moving to double-wrapped paper by 2020. This company's gonna be doing it. So there's a lot of stress. I'm having a hard time getting product because they're gearing up to these national accounts to be moving over. So we don't recommend at this point, it goes in the trash and that's where it goes right now, basically. So when people, when you ban this and you're Dunkin Donuts or you're McDonald's, they know the number. When they sell larger cups, it's about the heat and keeping the quality really warm. So the solution is, and you can't make this up, a double-paper wall cup. So if you look at the sustainability, it takes a lot more energy and effort to make this paper cup. So it's not only one paper cup, it's two. It takes three times longer to make, right? And inside every paper cup, there's a petroleum-based lining in there that's impregnated into the paper, which means it is not recyclable ever. There's some people saying they can. It just costs effectively unfeasible. So what has to happen, this can't go in your single stream. This goes in the trash. All the paper goes in the trash, just where the foam is. Now, when you're going into landfills, if you look at Vermont, we only have one landfill. A lot of this paper is three to four times the weight of foam. Again, same, paper, single wall. The problem here, it's good for smaller sizes. Again, polyline. It's no different, really, just a different format than the foam, okay? And that goes in the trash. You're running out of time. You're running out of time. You're talking trash, please. What? No, it's just going in there. So basically, I'm proposing it should be no bag, Dan. I mean, no bags, other than a reusable bag. That is the right answer. In five years, it will be here. Okay, what's your polystyrene take-home message? What's that? What's your polystyrene take-home message? Well, it's no different than the paper stuff. It's all going in the trash. The trash weighs more. It creates more gases and things like that because of the weight. You're opposed to the polystyrene. I'm opposed because if you look at the micro roasters, I sell all the micro roasters as they're printed cups, okay? It's important to, when you sell coffee, you need to have a printed cup to promote that brand. We started with Green Mountain Coffee when they had the little coffee roasters. It's so difficult to do a printed cup right now because of the pressure, because when people leave polystyrene to a paper cup, these little micro roasters, I can't print their name on it. I've been to places where they're putting stamps on. So it's becoming cost prohibitive because of the pressure going over. So, and it's not recyclable. A paper cup is not recyclable. So it goes in the same place as the foam. In terms of making it carbon, carbon products, it takes the same amount. It actually can take, when you do a double paper wall from a foam, you're doubling the input there. All right, are there questions from Mr. King? Representative Turing? I'm from Rutland. How many employees does the company have? We have 35, 35 employees celebrating 141 years this year. We're from our oldest family on the business side, you know. So the Senate won 13, is that gonna hurt your company? It's hurting us now. It's hurting us now. I can't, I showed you the Hunger Mountain bags. There's so much pressure on these qualities of the bags because when California eliminates plastic bags, everybody goes to paper. Well, you just can't turn these machines on. And then when they're a monopoly, and there's only one really viable paper bag manufacturer, when they have quality issues, they're like, no, we can't help you out. Because they're having them everywhere. So we're eating money on one of our customers. So it is affecting our business. It's affecting my business because I can't do printed cups for thriving new micro roasters. Micro roasters is no different to the micro breweries. It's really thriving. So it is affecting our business now. And I'm just saying, I'm just posing questions. If in five years, you look at this technology, Wegmans is doing the right thing, but they know a lot more than what we know in this room. And they see that cashier segment going away. And there's not gonna be any bags. You look at Costco, you look at BJ's, you look at Sam's, they don't have bags right now. And that's where they're all gonna go. And so my question, you enact this law and five years is gone, and really, you're not really doing anything. That's my only question. I'm just posing a question, where's our recycling going? The paper bag is, where's it gonna go? And it should be in one sentence. Our paper, all our mixed paper goes to this mail. One sentence. That's all we ask. Where's it going? All right, thank you very much for coming here. Thank you very, very thank you. Thank you. Next up. Can you just switch up? How old are you? Yeah. I know. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. And are you Louis? I'm Louis, yeah. Louis. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. It's an honor to appear before you this morning. Thanks, Greg. I'm due to thank, I'm a visiting professor at Bennington College, and I teach classes on plastic pollution. And before coming to Bennington, I served as EPA Regional Administrator during the Obama administration for EPA Region II, which sadly did not include Vermont. And I'm here with one of my students, Lily Selt, who is gonna join me in reviewing some of this information. So I think, you've run through some of the important issues, but the one statistic that really sticks with me is that if we don't really change the way we do single-use plastic packaging in the world, by 2025 for every three pounds of fish in the ocean, there will be one pound of plastic. And 8.8 million tons of plastic enter our ocean every year. And it's not coming from boats. It's 80% is land sourced. So it's litter coming off of the street. It's litter that gets at beaches. And if you look at something like a plastic bottle, not to pick on you, Representative, but if you take a plastic bottle and if it gets into the ocean, the ocean currents in the sunlight will serve almost like a paper shredder. And this bottle will become hundreds of pieces of plastic that then becomes available in the marine environment. The United Nations tells us that over 663 species have been impacted by plastic pollution. That's a photo of an albatross, if you look real closely. These birds are eating plastic and their guts are being filled with plastic. The seabirds often think that the colorful bottle caps on plastic bottles are shrimp. They bring it back to the nest. They feed the chicks. The chicks will often choke on the plastic. And if they don't choke, seabirds and lots of other marine life is just eating a lot of plastic and then they feel that they're full and they're not getting calories from regular food and they are very much damaged. It seems like almost every week there's a media report about a whale, for instance, was just found with 88 pounds of plastic in its stomach. And those are regular reports. I think one misconception with plastic is the gyros or the islands of plastic in the ocean. In fact, most of the plastic falls to the bottom. Only about 5% is on the surface and it breaks into small pieces. This is not just an ocean issue, although you may be asking, why does this matter in Vermont? Well, all rivers lead to the ocean, but also our lakes are loaded with microplastics. In Lake Champlain, there was a recent study that the plastics are passing through sewage treatment plants, which by the way, the microplastic may appear in the sludge from the sewage treatment plants. The SUNY Plattsburg study found 10,000 to 15,000 microplastics being discharged every day from sewage treatment plants in the Lake Champlain basin. And these microplastics are being ingested by fish and wildlife. They're also a chemical exposure issue because some toxins such as PCBs and heavy metals are almost like hitchhikers. They attach to the microplastics and then they can be consumed. Similar information throughout the Great Lakes. Plastics are made from chemicals and fossil fuels. So your work to reduce single use plastic packaging in Vermont is a climate change strategy. For many years, plastics were made from oil, but most recently they're made from ethane, which is a byproduct of fracking. So if you look at this diagram of fracking, which is not to scale, but if you look at the flare, that's ethane. And what companies are doing are trying to capture the ethane, send it by pipeline to new facilities called ethylene cracker plants. And at these ethylene cracker plants where the ethane is heated at high temperature, it becomes a major ingredient for single use plastic packaging. So the cost of single use plastic packaging will come way down, but it's not good news for people living near ethylene cracker plants. There are over 250 proposed in the United States, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the Gulf States. And some folks are saying this is the new coal. And again, we'll be relying on fracking to drive more production of single use plastic packaging. It's very much an environmental justice issue. These ethylene cracker facilities are proposed almost always in low income communities and communities of color. Plastic packaging has lots of toxic additives. So it's not just a solid waste issue. It's not just a water quality issue. It's a toxic issue. And when you think about your own life for a moment, if you're like me, you get a very mediocre sandwich for lunch that's overpriced and you eat it in 10 minutes. And what's left behind? The plastic bag that came in, perhaps a polystyrene container, a plastic straw, plastic condiment containers, a plastic water bottle, all of that plastic stays with us for centuries for a very mediocre 15 minute lunch. Plastic is also a health concern. I know your body has done a lot of work on PFOA. I've done a lot of work on PFOA in Hoosick Falls when I was at EPA. Vermont, by the way, is doing a much better job on PFOA than other states. But you may be surprised to know that PFOA is used as aligning in food packaging because it's grease resistant. So that's why I never eat microwavable popcorn. And as Paul Burns mentioned, microplastics are in our drinking water, in freshwater sources, but also twice as much in bottled water. Now when I teach my class on plastic pollution at Bennington College, I notice a lot of the students like Louie, who you'll hear from in a moment, are thinking, well, we can recycle our way out of this problem. And then when I tell them no, we can't, they look very sad, and I'm very sad because I'm a big booster of recycling. I love it, but worldwide we've only recycled 9% plastics and that number will be going down. So the bills you are considering, I call the plastic trifecta and it's terrific. And you will be one of the first states in the country to tackle all three of this material in one bill. California has addressed all of this, but in multiple bills and never all at once. So at this point, I wanna turn it over to Louie Selt who will talk to you a little bit about bags. Thank you, Judith. I won't take up too much time, but I just wanna briefly talk about section of this bill that focuses on the single use plastic bags, the banning of those, and the fee on paper. So I think it's different to consider the multiple factors that this affects in the environment. So not just the plastics that end up in the marine ecosystems affecting marine wildlife and ending up in all of our water and in that effect, but in 2014, approximately 100 billion single use plastic shopping bags were used just in the US and 12 million barrels of oil were used to make that many shopping bags. So the two types of plastics that are used to make plastic bags, the high density and the low density polyethylene. In container form, when these are thick plastics, these are some of the most recyclable plastics that are out there, but the film versions that are used to produce single use plastic bags cannot be recycled easily at all. And so these oftentimes will end up being recycled in curbside recycling bins and they end up going to a materials recovery facility or commonly referred to as MRFs, MRFs. And when these end up in MRFs, plastic bags, very commonly jam up the MRFs and cause the equipment to shut down for hours or even days costing these facilities time and money. The proper recycling of these thin film plastic bags is very difficult. It requires a completely separate and distinct recovery program and the public education for this program works has not been adequate. So there's really no easy way to recycle out of this problem like Judith mentioned. Only 5.5% of plastic bags have been recycled. So this is not a problem that we can recycle out of, reduction is the key goal here. So the fee on paper that is proposed in section 6693 of Senate Bill 113 is really essential to encourage the use of reusable bags and not just a shift to paper bags as we heard other people mentioned. In Brattleboro, Vermont, where they passed just a straight ban on plastic bags without a fee on paper, one of the major retail stores there said that 85% of customers just switched from plastic to paper and that is not what we want to encourage. We want to encourage a shift to reusable. Just shifting to paper creates a hardship on business owners, on small business owners especially because paper bags are more expensive to purchase than the plastic bags. So having a fee on paper is really beneficial for the store owners. And in section, subsection D of section 6693 of Senate Bill 113, it mentions, it clarifies that this money stays with the store owners and we highly support that and encourage that. So 345 local governments around the country have put a ban or a fee on plastic with California passing the statewide and New York more recently. I myself am part of a local group in Bennington, Vermont, local chapter 350.org, which is an environmental group there. For the last year, we've been working on trying to get a local bag ban and a fee on paper in Vermont. Right now, we're putting that operation on hold to support Senate Bill 113 and to really put all our efforts into getting this bill passed. We think having this standard across the state would make it easier for everyone involved and really addressing not just bags but the plastic trifecta that Judith mentioned. For these reasons and more, I think it's very reasonable for Vermont to follow along and ban single use plastic bags and put a fee on paper bags. We fully support this bill and think it's absolutely going in the right direction for environmental sustainability. So I'll pass it back to Judith. Thanks. So turning to straws, it's always in the top 10 items found during beach cleanups. So I think a straws upon request policy makes sense. We certainly don't, I'm curious about what Paul Burns said. We don't want to tell stores that they have to offer plastic straws if they don't currently, but I think you can work through that issue. I think the most important provision in this bill is actually the polystyrene ban and let me explain why. Polystyrene is made from the chemical styrene, which is a probable human carcinogen. We've known this for decades and we are very concerned about styrene leaching into food and beverages. For instance, if you have a hot cup of tea in a polystyrene or styrofoam cup, that's a problem. You're gonna get some of the styrene leaching into your tea. So we know that polystyrene is not biodegradable that lasts in landfills or on the side of the road for over 500 years. And it absolutely is not recyclable. And I really wanna emphasize this point. In a laboratory, you can, but in real life, there are not viable polystyrene recycling programs. So as I consult with local governments around the country who are considering polystyrene bans, representatives of the manufacturers say don't ban it, recycle it, but even when the recycling operations are heavily subsidized by the polystyrene industry, they don't last. And that is all outlined in a state Supreme Court decision from New York City, where there now is a polystyrene ban fully in effect in New York City, a city of eight million people, but it was long thought because the manufacturers kept saying you can recycle it. And ultimately the court looked very closely at that and concluded that is not the case. It's also banned in Albany County. It's banned in the state of California. From a toxics perspective, you absolutely have to keep this in the bill. And also, you know how brutal polystyrene is. So one container gets on the side of the road and it breaks into many, many different pieces. I think your bill is a reasonable and modest approach. The European Union recently banned 10 different single-use plastic items, effective 2021. They've banned plastic cutlery plates, straws, drink stirrers, sticks for balloons, and which maybe is a European thing, I know a lot of sticks for balloons. And plastic Q-tips, you know, when you buy a Q-tip, it could be cardboard or it could be plastic. Well, believe it or not, they're showing up in litter. And then the really hard thing is how do we deal with cigarette butts? If you look at a cigarette, the filter you may think is cotton, it's plastic. And that is a major litter problem. It's kind of the last thing people feel that it's okay to litter. And those filters go down storm drains. They go out into the water and the filter will break down into many, many different pieces of plastic. They are not cotton. And on climate change, you know, the United Nations tells us we have 12 years to tackle climate change before we experience catastrophic impacts of climate change. I would argue many parts of the world are already experiencing catastrophic impacts from climate change. When I was at EPA, Hurricane Sandy hit, devastated parts of New York and New Jersey. You had Irene after Maria hit, the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands called me. I was since left EPA, but I was asked to come down and deal with some of the environmental impacts of Hurricane Maria. Places in the world like the Caribbean are simply not going to be able to handle more and more hurricanes and more and more intense weather. So while you may be motivated by reducing litter, by cleaning our treasured water bodies, you should also think of this bill, S-113, as an important opportunity to address climate change. Thank you. Thank you. Are there questions for Judith or Louie? Representative McComber? Microplastics. Is that a different class than microbeads? Yeah, microplastics are basically little pieces of plastic that are five millimeters or less. It's like a grain of sand. Think of that size. And then microbeads are different, including until President Obama signed a national law on microbeads, they were purposefully added to personal care products. And cigarette filters? Is that primarily polystyrene? It's not polystyrene. I don't know exactly the type of, but I know it's not polystyrene. OK, thank you. President Mullen? Simply, could we get a copy of your presentation? This was helpful, but you had some statistics. Yes. Both your presentations were helpful for us to fully understand. I'd be happy to send it to you. Sorry, I was at a hearing late last night in the Hudson Valley. Representative Bates. First, I want to thank you for coming down or coming up here from Barrington. It's great. Are you guys the organization that goes to our select board meetings and talk about your plastic bags? Yeah, yeah, I've joined them just about six months ago, like during the last year. It's quite interesting when I hear you guys talk. So anyway, thank you for coming. He's really smart. You should just listen to him and the other Bennington students. And we also launched a project at Bennington College called Beyond Plastics, dedicated to reducing single-use plastic packaging nationwide. And we are a technical resource. We're on social media. Our website will be up next month. And happy to be a resource. And I think your advisory committee also makes good sense. Once you pass this important proposal, let's keep going on extended producer responsibility, the circular economy, a lot of good information out of the European Union. And we're happy to be a technical resource for that body. Do you have thoughts on the previous witness who said that 2.2 mil, I mean, it would just cause increased use of thicker bags? Yeah, I think he made a good point. And I think you have two ways to address this. Go to four mil or just ban single-use plastic bags altogether and do not state a thickness and then have a requirement that the bag be reused at least 125 times. There are some communities in the US Virgin Islands, for instance. Some of the supermarkets just went for thicker single-use plastic bags. And that's even worse. So I think the other witness made a really good point. Most of the laws are either four mil or silent. Well, I also like this point that you could just ban bags altogether. I wouldn't object to that. So California's four mil? Yes. So what we got, I mean, we asked our legislative counsel, 2.25 came from New Jersey or Maryland? Maryland, yeah. But the other states don't have statewide. So are these bills that are in process, do you know? New Jersey is a bill, not a law. California is a law. And then New York just banned plastic bags in the state budget. And they did no mil. They just said no plastic bags. At point of sale. At point of sale. New York. In New York. And that's what California was? No, I think California is four mil. But I will double check that for you. I like the way New York did it, because then you don't kind of compete for thicker and thicker plastic bags. Although that reusable orange one is helpful. You're looking for the trash. I hate to throw that one out. You know, I spared you my, we already had it. But let me reach for one. I think you don't want to ban these. These are actually made from recycled plastic. But I think you can have a requirement that it be reused at least 125 times. And you can either go to four mil, or just silent on the fitness. And what's so crazy is, you know, Louie mentioned how many total bag laws? 345. 345, they're not consistent. And that's why you need a state law. Most of the laws are local. And everyone's recreating the wheel. So we're also learning as we go along. But I think a smart statewide law makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much. Yeah, sure. And Kathy Jameson, you noted you had one previous witness. It's something about our paper recycling waiver. Would you clarify that for us? So last year, at the end of the session, there was a provision put into statute that would authorize the agency to allow the disposal of mixed paper. Remember, that was the one that we're having at our time market. If there were no markets for it, we have received no requests in the past year. And that sunsets this June 30th. So we never use the waiver? We never use the waiver. The mixed paper is not being thrown away. But it is at a cost that it is being sent to another facility to be recycled into other materials. Okay. Thank you for clarifying. Thank you. Senator Dolan, would you just give a question for the witness? Yeah, just a clarification to try to address your point of not wanting to inadvertently ban that recycled plastic bag. So just trying to figure out that language if we try to be silent on the size of plastic. You're just banned plastic. You could be silent on the thickness and say all bags sold in Vermont need to be reusable. We'll work on the definition, but essentially reusable at least 125 times. That's going to knock out all of your single use plastic bags. But I think preserve the reusable bags, even if they're made from plastic. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Chair. So, Midy, I just want to make sure everyone is aware that the newest version of S96 is available in hard copy. Laura's going to hand it out right now. We also have Michael O'Grady for after the floor to go through that bill with us and move into, hopefully, final markup. The possible vote. All right, we'll adjourn.