 So, good morning everybody, so there are new faces in the room, so I'm going to follow Senator Campus' suggestion. Introduce himself, we'll go around the room as we change topics, we change cast sometimes, so we're on five, six of people just say who they are, and if you're here formally representing someone, if you could say who you're representing. I'm Jen Holling with the Chittinville Race District. I'm Jack Gerstin, I'm a reporter at the Lincoln Cable News in NBC Boston. I'm Linda Petter, representing myself and a group called Sustainable Williston. Brian Forrest from Sustainable Williston. I'm Hans Banske with Nick Krasniger, we represent SWITMA. Heather Scholleis, William Scholleis, and Associates, we represent Tech of Flux. Brad Braden from Tech of Flux. Lynn Levins also from Sustainable Williston. Kathy James City, Agency of Natural Resources. Matt McMahon with MMR, representing the theorist of New England. Will you run there with the Vermont League of Cities and Tests? Lindy Sargent, Barton, Vermont, representing myself, and also John, an organization up in the kingdom. We'll talk about that, the actual extension. Phil Bresen, representing the American progressive agonies. Frank Stanley, capital connections, representing the American progressive agonies. Brian Campion, 6th senator of Benetton County in Wilmington. Mark McDonald. Mark McDonald, president of Archery. My name's Chris Bray, I represent Yasset County. And this is June Newark, I'm the assistant. Nice. So, welcome everyone. We're going to start picking up S-113, Symmetric Classics Bill, and I'm excited for information to work through. The goal is to be voting this bill out this week first, given the work we've already done it. I'm attracted to that. We've been, we have a long way to go, so let's jump right in. Let's invite Ms. Jamieson to join us at the table. For, we've heard background information and sort of bits and pieces, but we went back up and had a clearer picture of how the proposed agenda bill fit into the whole ecosystem of managing waste systems and things that you want us to know and remind as we edit and develop the bill further. So, good morning. Thanks for coming. Happy to do so. For the record, I'm Kathy Jamieson. I'm the Solid Waste Program Manager at the Agency of Natural Resources. Thank you, the agency appreciates the opportunity to comment on the bill today. And to be forthright, the administration position on S-113 as it is neutral. Today, I would like to share with you background and factual information regarding... Let's interrupt one second, because we just, periodically we were often enough, we've here heard that the administration's position on things is neutral. And I hadn't never heard that from another administration in the past. And so what does that mean exactly in terms of what we could expect? Does that mean that it could be vetoed? It may be signed? Can you give us some indication? So at my level, hopefully you understand that. So my understanding is that it would not be opposed to the bill as it is today. Something's not opposed to somebody would support it, but this is neutral. Okay. That's my understanding. Thank you very much. And happy to provide background information regarding single use bags, changes that we are now having and experiencing in the recycling market, and then potential options that the committee may want to consider in developing this bill. So, if I may write in. Thank you. So you've heard some background information already about plastics and whatnot, and I know there's a lot of people to testify today. So I'm going to try to stay at a high level. We have, I had staff dig up lots of detailed information. I'm not sure you have the time for all those details today, but we can certainly be happy to provide details whenever the committee wants. But I'd like to share some high level information about single use bags first. Sure. And if you have information, I think we ought to at least send it over to Jude. We'll post it and people can read outside of committee. Okay. Yeah, certainly. So originally, many countries and then in the United States, counties and cities, originally were concerned regarding single use plastic bags due to visible marine litter along coastlines. So if you look at how this issue has evolved, it evolved in places like Hawaii, California, coastal states or cities, and then countries that have coastlines. Since then, as you have heard, it has emerged trying to address other potential issues, including systemic potential ecosystems issues, the vast increase in the amount of plastic waste that is generated, and then resource conservation issues. So I'm going to start with the resource conservation issues. You've heard from others and may hear again today about a term called life cycle analysis. And that's when an evaluation is done over what they call the life of a product from looking at the materials when it's first either excavated or extracted, produced, the items produced, transported, the consumer uses it in the end of life. So when you're comparing different bags, single use bags to durable bags, the most important assumptions in these evaluations are how often a durable bag is used and the recycled content of a durable bag. So if you just compared, like let's say, and no one would do this, but you used a durable bag only once and you compared that to a single use plastic bag, well, there's a lot less energy used in creating a single use plastic bag because it's really thin and it's easy to transport and whatnot. But what's important to consider is how many times you use the durable bag and the more times you use it in the higher recycled content, eventually it will have less environmental impact than a single use plastic bag. The other considerations beyond life cycle analysis, though, are the negative environmental impacts that you have heard about single use plastic bags. These are not considered part of the life cycle analysis and let me explain. So the end of life in a life cycle analysis is assuming proper management, so that the bag is either properly disposed, properly recycled, or for the very few that could be composted, composted. And as you have heard that a lot of these plastic bags escape into the environment. They have been documented to contribute to litter. They don't degrade easily, or when they do degrade, they degrade into smaller bits and pieces that then have an impact to wildlife, especially aquatic organisms. And right now there's a big question on the potential risk on the food chain consumption. There's been documentation of obstruction to natural drainage ways as well as man-made sewer systems, stormwater systems. And they also cause issues in management at day, meaning plastic single use bags, and solid waste facilities, such as our... And you'll probably hear more about that today at our recycling facilities where all the blue bin items go to be managed that they cause clogging and that the system has to be shut down. So plastic bags as well as other plastic film clogs up. The recycling system to the point it has to be shut down and staff have to go in there. It's a dangerous job and cut out the plastic in order for the machinery to run again. A couple years ago when I testified on this, I contacted Chittin and Salloway's district. They reported to me that in a year, 780 staff hours were spent cleaning plastic film off machinery. And that's downtime for the mirth and expense and danger for the staff. At landfills, if plastic bags are disposed, if it's a windy day, they can easily get away from the open face of the landfill. And the perimeter of landfills are required to have fencing. And staff at the landfill routinely, at least once a week, have to walk the perimeter of the landfill picking up. Any of the litter in the most common item is plastic single use bags. With respect to how much is in our waste stream, we measure our waste by weight. And so considering how light a plastic bag is, we looked at the waste composition study that we had done in 2018. Less than 1% of the weight of the material disposed in Vermont is single use plastic bags. So it's not a big part of our waste stream when it actually is disposed, but it can cause all these other environmental issues. And the last reason about why entities are looking at ordinances or fees against bags is that reduction has the greatest environmental impact when you reduce using a material that's far greater in reducing energy consumption, water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions than compared to recycling. So if there's a reduction alternative, that by and large will have greater benefit. And looking at who is implementing single use bags, this is not just a hot, what's the expression? Hot button, I don't think. This has been ongoing for years. There are at least 65 countries throughout the world, including countries in Africa, South America, Europe. In the United States, you have the whole state of California, you've heard, has adopted a ban with a fee on the paper bags. Hawaii did it in essence by every island adopting an ordinance. And there are more than 375 U.S. counties or municipalities that have enacted legislation or ordinances that either ban or charge fees on single use bags. So what kind of programs are out there? Originally years ago, voluntary programs were tried. They were demonstrated not to be very successful. I think California probably is the best case study on that, where there were multiple attempts at voluntary programs. They were not shown to be effective. That led to about 130 either counties or municipalities in California passing ordinances or bans that then eventually led to the statewide program. As far as mandatory programs, they have been documented to reduce single use bag consumption. And in addition to the consumption, they have also documented a decrease in some of the other impacts. For example, San Jose, California, the real impetus behind them passing an ordinance was they was clogging up their man-made drainage system. And they documented that within a year of passing the ordinance, they had a 89% decrease in the maintenance that they had to use in maintaining these drainage systems. On the East Coast, an example is Montgomery County, Maryland, where an impetus there was in litter, and they documented more than a 55% reduction in plastic bags in the litter within the first year. You've heard about the different models and just to summarize that the models that are out there, they're basically bans, fees, and a hybrid. And a little bit about each one. A ban, generally, the retailer is not allowed to provide that type of single use bag to the customer. Some of these programs will specify the either material thickness or the type of the reusable, durable bag. And there are 135 U.S. cities and six counties that ban only single use plastic bags. There's a fewer number that ban both plastic and paper bags. There are not as many cities and counties in the United States that have a fee-only system. There's only a dozen cities that have a fee on both paper and plastic. And there's six cities that only have a fee on the single use plastic bag. The most popular model used in the United States is the hybrid model. It's used by more than 150 cities and counties in the United States, including the state of California. I think one of the reasons why it's favored is that it allows the retailer to provide at cost a paper bag to the customer when the customer doesn't bring in a durable bag. One of the issues that's raised with if an entity decides to ban both plastic and paper is the cost of the durable bag, especially on lower-income people. But by having a nominal fee to the paper bags, if someone forgets the durable bag, they can, you know, for, you know, 5 cents or 10 cents or whatever that fee is, they can get a paper bag. And paper bags generally, they can be reused several times before, you know, they're no longer usable. These range in these programs from 5 cents to 25 cents with a majority using a 10-cent fee per paper bag. All of these programs tend to have exemptions such as for prescription, you know, bags used for prescription medications when you go into a hardware store and buy little bits of hardware, like nuts and bolts and screws, bags for produce, and the like. So, and that's pretty common with all of these programs. That is generally, it's at the, either the checkout counter-type bag or their carryout industrial type bag that is being targeted. That's a quick summary on bags. I'd like to move on to recyclables unless you have questions about bags. I just want to stay in your tour. Okay. Great. So with recyclables, and then you've also heard about some other single-use plastic items and packaging. So the market really has dramatically changed since early 2018, and that's because China changed their encrotation requirements, especially at targeting the content of recyclables. And even though in Vermont, we were only, depending on China for managing our mixed recycled paper, the West Coast States in particular and other states were using China for managing a lot of the materials that go in the blue bin. What this meant was that a lot more recyclables ended up on the U.S. market. And recyclables are viewed as a commodity. They are a commodity. And so economically, when you have a lot more material in the market, it tends to decrease the price of that commodity. And so we've had a dramatic decrease in the revenue from our recyclables, not only in Vermont, but nationally. And this has caused recycling to cost more. And we recognize both in Vermont and then I'm also on conference calls and groups nationally that we need to manage our recyclables differently so that they can be valuable inputs to manufacturing rather than trying to find a home for it. They should easily be used in making a new product. And Europe has been using this model for a few years now in their goal, and they call it the circular economy. And the goal is so that products and their packaging are designed such that it will easily feed into manufacturing something new when the consumer is done with it. And ultimately, if that's implemented, you'll greatly reduce waste and the cost associated with managing waste. You will increase the value of the recyclables, which will make it a more viable system for recycling, and you'll provide manufacturers with less expensive inputs for manufacturing. So it's a win-win-win economically. And so we're recognizing in the United States we need to jump on that kind of model just to stay competitive, to say nothing about trying to get to a more sustainable recycling system. So we also, at the same time, in order to get there, recognize, again, this is not just in Vermont, but this is nationally, there's national discussions about how can we invest in our existing recycling infrastructure. And one of the huge challenges with that is we're trying to do it at a time when recyclables are worth much less today than they were a couple of years ago. So that's the economic challenge with all that. So these issues, and then meanwhile, if we look at our recycle stream, we are starting to see more and more packaging that is not easily recyclable. Now, when you think about recyclable, that just means there's a market somewhere to reuse that material, or use that material to manufacture something else. And so we're seeing some of that film plastic or the tri-level or tri-layered materials that those materials don't easily have a ready market to be used, but they're becoming more and more common in packaging. So we're struggling with changes in packaging, the need to invest in our infrastructure, and the recycling market. And what some states are now looking at to try to deal with these challenges is the recycling system altogether. And some states are seriously considering legislation for extended producer responsibility for basically packaging and printed materials. And these states include Washington, Connecticut, and I believe Indiana. So that's kind of the landscape of the recycling system and markets in that some change needs to happen in order to make the system more sustainable. Moving on to S-113. So as I understand it, the bill would have a ban on certain plastic items in 2020, but over the summer of 2019 there would be a summer study. And one option in the summer study right now I think targets single-use bags, plastic straws, and polystyrene. So one option for the committee to consider is that there's a lot more material that we're dealing with in our recycle stream. And then also in packaging that's not easily recycled and that the committee may want to consider broadening the scope of the study committee to include packaging, recycle items, and single-use plastic to just make it more holistic. With respect to who should be on the committee, Act 175 in 2014 had this solid waste infrastructure advisory committee and that had, at that point in time, it was important to hear from the solid waste management entities, the district's alliances in town. So there's several members from that group as well as the private solid waste businesses that included the hollers as well as the MRF operator. We may also wish to extend this because it's the bag issue and I think the Vermont Retailers and Grocers Association was already included in the bill. As well as perhaps members of the House and the Senate just to make it a comprehensive group as far as what they could consider. It would be options and recommendations on how best to reduce the use of single-use bags and other single-use items. And then with respect to recycling, it would be good for the committee to also look at that with respect to how should Vermont better manage packaging and printed materials. Well, I think as I said, it only started in 113. It started with a bill, it was actually a New Jersey bill that I thought was the most comprehensive thing I'd seen and it was only started at one point. But conversations prior to the town meeting were great and it's coming back. It suggests to me that it's a bill that helps get started but then packaging, this is one of those things where you pull on a thread and you keep coming on more threads to connect with and store packaging and it would be great to take a sort of an ecosystem approach and not just deal with the problem at the end of its cycle. On the circular economy comment, are we talking about, is part of the issue the quality of the recyclables? In other words, it becomes a more circular economy if the quality of the recyclable materials is increased The quality is one part of it, you know, so that you have, when we talk about contamination and recyclables, there can be bits of plastic in the cardboard and bits of paper in the plastic, etc. That's one issue, but the other part of it, though, and more important part of it is the design of the product and the packaging so it can easily or easily be recycled or reused or fit into a manufacturing scheme and you need both parts of that to work. Can you say a little bit and remind the committee about the kind of extended producer responsibility programs we already have, like batteries or elsewhere? Sure, and I did submit a report at the beginning of the year that had a table and so we had great collection success in materials that have extended producer responsibility and for folks that don't know what that term means, it means the manufacturer is responsible for basically the collection, transportation and recycling oftentimes of the material, the product that they're generating. So we have programs for used electronics, paint, primary batteries, mercury-added products, and I'm missing. Anyways, with those, and I think there's a fifth one that I escaped, that's in the mercury-added products, so that's lamps, light bulbs, and thermostats. With those products, once the program is implemented, we have seen much greater participation in the collection, so we have higher diversion rate, which means that material is not going to the landfill and is being properly managed on the other end. Equally importantly is that the burden, the financial burden of managing those materials is on the manufacturer and it's up to the manufacturer on how that cost gets incorporated into the product and that makes it a more, you know, if it's in the cost of the product that product, when you pay for it, is then addressing its end-of-life issue instead of putting the burden of some of these harder-to-manage end-of-life issues on the municipality or on the consumer, which may not have as many options for proper management, such as right now Household Hazardous Waste is a very expensive program and the burden is on the municipalities to solve waste districts, to have the events, to have the facilities to properly manage that waste. So something, there's plenty of opportunity for us to do better on solid waste. Yes, always. So there's that, or it's a question, stitch in time saves nine. If you anticipate the end-life of a product at the time of design, manufacturer, et cetera, does that end up, is it cost-effective overall? Do you look at the economics of it? You know, I think that a better question would be, would that be enough of an incentive for the manufacturer to look at the economics of it? And that's hard to answer because some of the packaging that manufacturers use, they're targeting the consumer. They're trying to capture the consumer as they're cruising down the aisle in the store. And so there's a lot of factors that go into how a manufacturer selects the packaging, but it would be important for them to help pay for the costs of managing that packaging once it's discarded. Any questions for me, James? Thank you. As always. Thank you very much. Next question. This holiday. Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you for having me come and speak about this issue. My name is Jennifer Holliday. I'm the Director of Public Policy and Diversion Facilities for the Chittenden Solid Waste District. I go by Jen. I'm also the Chair of the Vermont Product Stewardship Council, and the membership of the council includes all of the Solid Waste Districts in the alliances in the state of Vermont. And we were formed back in 2008 to work on initiatives dealing with extended producer responsibility, as Kathy had mentioned. I love going after Kathy because she talks about everything that I want to talk about, so you're already primed. So we have, the initiatives include legislation that we've worked on for batteries, paint, thermostats, e-waste, and fluorescent lamps in the state. And these programs are incredibly successful. We have some of the highest collection rates in the country on all of these products. So they've been very, very successful. So I want to comment on the elements of, some of the elements of 113, and then suggest how this committee can continue to work on lessening the environmental impact of single-use plastic as well as other packaging using EPR as a tool. So the Chittenden Solid Waste District's mission is to reduce the amount of waste that's generated in Chittenden County. So that is our mission. And certainly banning single-use plastic bags will result in a reduction of this material going into the waste stream and will help us accomplish that mission. So that's just a fact. Plastic bags are also, as Kathy had mentioned, problematic in the recycling stream. Even though there are collection containers for plastic bags at the front of grocery stores and other retailers, many consumers don't understand that material needs special collection. It's not a problem in the Northeast Kingdom where we're so separate that it all works perfectly. I know you're very special in the Northeast Kingdom when you can understand that. Just making sure everything's inside. Everybody has that for the record. For the record. So... Even if we're not talking about recycling. Right, right. So when you're talking about what we see when we go into grocery stores, those are being recycled? Yes. They are being recycled? They are. They are backhauled to manufacturers that mostly make recycled plastic lumber. Okay. They don't go to us that we don't recycle them. They're a different system. And so consumers don't always understand that not many bags get recycled that way. And oftentimes consumers think they're plastic bags that belong in the blue bin. And what happens to the blue bin materials for the majority of Vermont, not the Northeast Kingdom, but the rest of the state is that it goes to one of two single streamed MRFs in the state. One is owned by Kasella, located in Rutland, and operated by Kasella. The other is located in Williston. We own that facility. And that is district owned facility. And that is operated by contract by Kasella. So one of two things will happen to that plastic bag. It ends up at the MRF, the material recovery facility, is that it will either get through the system and acts very much like a piece of paper. And so what will happen, it will end up in the paper stream. And as Kathy pointed out, this in particular is a very difficult commodity right now to sell. In fact, we are paying somewhere between $30 and $40 a ton just to have it recycled today. And so when the plastic bag ends up in that bale, it is a contaminate and it downgrades that material for market. And so they'll take other paper above ours if there's a lot of contaminates in it. May I ask the question? I just want to go back to what Ms. Holiday mentioned about plastic bags being recycled sometimes into plastic lumber. So again, that ends up, I suspect, eventually in the waste stream as well. It's not as though it can be recycled forever, right? Correct, but I think... It's used and then it can deteriorate? Correct, and I don't know a lot about plastic lumber by any stretch of imagination, but my sense is that probably when looking at lifecycle analysis because of the longevity of the plastic lumber and the products that you don't have to use to preserve it, perhaps that is... Okay, and you're not sustaining... Is it going to be used for decking and trimming? Yeah, for decking is huge. Yeah, yeah. But they also may, you know, as technology improves, may figure out ways to recycle that as well. It works, doesn't it? It does last a long time. And when it's harvested, do they have trip tickets on them? So the other thing that can happen to these bags other than contaminating the paper stream is that as Kathy indicated, it can get tangled up in the sorting equipment at the MRFs. So here's photos of this equipment, this particular equipment. Thank you. What happens is there's spinning discs that serve the material and these spinning discs will get wrapped with what we call tanglers, and tanglers can be rope, hoses, clothing, but as you can see in the picture, plastic bags are a big issue. And what happens when that occurs, the equipment isn't as efficient at sorting material and you need to shut it down, lock it out, and workers have to go in and hand cut all that material off of the star screens. And as you can imagine, that's dangerous and takes three to four hours of one person every day to do this. So that's three to four hours you have to shut down that? No, so what happens is six people go in but cumulatively it's three or four hours for a worker. What's that? Yeah. So those are the problems with plastic bags in the recycling stream and as Kathy pointed out, I believe plastic bags, if you look at plastic versus paper the life cycle analysis of the two actually paper produces more greenhouse gas and emissions than plastic bags. Therefore, if the committee decides to ban plastic bags considerations should be made to ban or place a fee on the paper bags as well to negate the overuse of paper bags and encourage the use of reusable bags. So I'd like to move on to polystyling and other packaging. Just a question on paper, do you have a question of a new bag at first time that increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with that on today? If you look at recycling it it improves the story. It improves the story but when you're looking at life cycle analysis you're looking at the mining or harvesting of the raw materials the manufacturing of that material the transportation and then the end of life the use and the end of life of that material. So there's all of those are examinants Kathy said is assumed at the end of the life it's being recycled but still paper has a higher impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions to the environment. Do you figure how many times a well used paper bag can be reused? I believe that analysis is for one time use. See and that's the issue well made paper bags I've had paper bags heavy duty with handles that are reused over and over similar to a cloth or a heavy duty plastic reusable bag so it's not apples and apples it's apples and oranges. Well I think some people will reuse them and some people won't and you can't assume that they're going to be reused so that's how it's studied. So moving on to polystyrene food service products expanded polystyrene or EPS is not recyclable unless the material is dry unless it's clean unless it's collected in enormous quantities and then you have to put it through a process to densify the material in order to make it economically feasible to send it out of state basically for marketing and you have to keep it separate that type of the food service is different than the expanded polystyrene that's used for packing appliances and electronics so you have to keep those materials separate. We don't think that collection or recycling of post-consumer polystyrene service products is currently feasible in Vermont for those reasons and alternative is for EPS food service products that are recyclable and compostable do exist however recyclability or compostability doesn't necessarily make it a better choice for the environment and if there's anything that I hope this committee remembers that I say today it's those words that recyclability and compostability of packaging doesn't necessarily make it the best choice for the environment once it's made and once we use it recycling is the best choice but when the manufacturers are choosing recyclability and compostability is not necessarily the gauge to measure that by and unfortunately most of the global manufacturers are producing our products packaging our products with that in mind because of the consumer demand because that's what the consumer sees is that packaging at the end of the life and they want and they're mad if they can't recycle it but the reality is that you have to look at the whole life cycle analysis and from the as I say the mining and the production and the transportation and the use of that packaging to determine whether it's best for the environment or not because if we're all looking at environmental issues the most pressing and urgent and serious issue that we have today concerning our planet is global warming so you have to use the green house gas emissions for the whole life cycle of packaging and a good example might be tuna fish tuna fish comes in a pouch and tuna fish comes in a metal can and if you look at those two materials from a life cycle perspective the the pouch is a preferable produces five times less greenhouse gas emissions even if you recycle that can in the can it doesn't come with any packaging it's the best used to be in the northeast people do their own food and put it in a glass jar that was reusable that's right some of us some of us, right you were saying the possibility of environmental important criteria for designing a way system designing packaging and so what rises to one of the most important criteria from who you're saying greenhouse gas emissions that's correct reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions so clearly packaging is the best and packaging that generates less greenhouse gas emissions is better than others so another example is mail order materials that come to your door comes in a box or a film envelope most times the film envelope is the best environmental choice even though it's not recyclable in most places just a quick point it seems funny that we seem to be steadily going backwards because when I was growing up we raised a lot of our own food we raised our own meat and tons of people did but then we used to go to the grocery store and to the department store and get stuff and as humanity progresses we appear to be doing worse and worse because now we get on Amazon and order something from way far away that comes on a truck and a plane and a bus and a train and it shows up in packaging a big box full of plastic wrapping or home peanuts or you name it and so it sounds like as I like to say humanity circling the drain as we pretend we're making improvements we seem to be treating the earth worse and worse just to add to that I was born in 1970 and that's plastic bags I don't think we're even around then so people would bring their bags right to the market if they were in paper bags so this is kind of going back to what people were doing in that way so we can't recycle away the problem I know a lot of you thought I was born in the 80's you see I was thinking 60's I was born in the 90's I'm a champion I remember so well you know the working group is looking at the narrow first question was what might be plastic bag straws polystyrene but we keep on hearing about taking a bigger view so if you were to help us think through what the charge to that working group would be how would you design that working group to help progress possible so I would be so that is at the end of my testimony is a suggestion that the committee continues to work on this packaging and printed material by initiating a working group that develops an EPR packaging proposal that would be the basis of legislation for next year and the proposal could include the scope of the packaging and printed material what the financial incentive would be for producers of printed paper and packaging to minimize the environmental impact including greenhouse gas emissions and how to structure the requirement for producers to provide and finance the production program including using the current infrastructure because we do have a lot of good infrastructure but for them to have skin in the game would be important as well can Vermont affect commerce on a Vermont scale of EPR? yes if we can change the minds of the producers what are they doing? is that what you're asking me? I'm just wondering how it's good for us to be ambitious so when we see something that makes sense we change the way we package so we create less waste to begin with lower greenhouse gas emissions but I'm just wondering how practical it is for us as a small state how far can we go on scale problems? California doing something like this for instance it always helps us but I think 40 million people do the same kind of work I think Vermont's always been a leader we had the first EPR program for batteries and we're a leader in a lot of our EPR programs and other states look to our models when they're looking at legislation so in that respect I think it would be great for Vermont to move forward we as a population might not be able to move the needle that much I think other states do look to us in terms of EPR for packages I just wanted to share with the committee that this was pioneered EPR for packaging happened in Europe over 20 years ago and today there's 34 European nations 11 countries in Asia South America and all of Australia there's five provinces in Canada that have EPR for packaging so this isn't new and in fact in Vermont we did introduce a bill back in 2011 H218 that was EPR for packaging Rhode Island and Connecticut followed several years later and today as Kathy mentioned there are three states with several bills that are in play Washington, Massachusetts and Canada so it's not a matter of if it's when and how and what I am concerned about is that all of these states and some of these other countries many of these other countries really look at the end of the life as the metric for measuring what's preferable in packaging and so the funding mechanism or the financial incentive is set up that influences manufacturers designed for recyclability and whereas in society we really need to be looking at designing material that has less greenhouse gas emissions and so back to the polystyrene packaging if you look at the alternatives for polystyrene food where there is recyclable and composable packaging but some of these materials have a greater cost in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and so that if the intention of that then is to benefit the environment then you're potentially not achieving that the schedule for that in order to make cost-overs to keep the alive the subject moving is this week and certainly what you were saying before there's a lot of complexity to it not something we can sort out for ourselves in the next three days but we can sort out how we ask that working group what we ask them to take on defining the problem is a reasonable thing for us to do if you have language suggestions how you would constitute that group and then spell out the charge it would be given then I think that would be great if you could send out a community and share it and use that to jump-start our own at developing what the working group would do absolutely and actually that goes for anyone in the room so we're at that phase where it's helping to get contributions okay anything else that we didn't get to a couple questions I think you jumped ahead do you skip anything you wanted to cover no that was my testimony I have paper copies for everyone as well thank you very much and if you can submit it I will just one more quick question about where is your recyclable plastic headed these days where's that market the Castella markets all of our material but it's all relatively local it's not a lot of it's going overseas it's like a lot of other places none of it's going overseas just the paper thank you very much Mr. Moore what are you Moore you're here the students are right up here so I want to thank you thank you thank you good morning you came with show and tell yeah I did I brought some show and tell stuff really my name is actually George Braden and I've been going by Braden my whole life and yes it's confusing and it's terrible Brad Braden it's awful and I blame my parents for that but anyways I'm the general manager for a business unit Commodore Technology and that was a business that my family owned and we sold the Technoplex last May and so I've been around the plastic and packaging and foaming I've been to trade shows and every third year in Germany and here in the US I've done a bunch of plant visits and I know quite a bit about foaming plastics and so my company I'm not in government affairs but my company thought that I would be a good person to just come and talk about this with you and I really appreciate the opportunity Technoplex makes Technoplex makes six different business units and we make from very high tech medical tubing to foaming cartons yeah and this unit that I'm part of and that my family's business became part of is the Dalko Packaging and I'm going to get into some of the products that we make here and there's a couple of sure no we do not the closest manufacturing plant that my father started is in Bloomfield, New York where I grew up in Canada, New York which actually looks a little bit like Vermont it's a beautiful place but we make two products that may or may not be considered as part of the band and so I just want to do a little bit of demonstration on the foam and the plastic and just give you some examples because people in my whole life have been telling me in the last decade or two tell me that what we make is terrible and I say to them no it's not it's not terrible so I got a couple of things one of the things that we talk about is to these foam paste filling up the landfills in Vermont plastics 13% polystyrene is 3% of the 13th so half a percent but this was an interesting thing that I did is I went and took this foam tray and I cut a piece out of the center and I put it in a vice and I just slept it there overnight so it's kind of show what might happen to a foam tray if it's sat in a landfill with I don't know 20 feet of heavy stuff on it and all the air gets pushed out and it's about a 95% reduction in thickness and then I just kind of wanted to show that you know this is how much plastic goes in to making one of these trays these are both 10.1 grams so and we're looking on alternatives because you know what the market is telling us the market is telling us we don't like this stuff right and so as a company we look at other stuff so we're looking at this you know this is the amount of plastic that's in this one this is 30.1 I don't even think it'll take as much need as this one I don't even think it will so that's it's a lot more natural resource and people kind of miss that so so the foam one is an extended polystyrene right and the clear is extruded these are both extruded so you have an extrusion system and you make sheet then you make rolls then you put the rolls through a machine you heat the material and then you form it and so this is formed with a similar similar equipment for these two this one actually is PET PET polystyrene, polypropylene I don't know why it really matters it might matter to the recycling systems another thing I think that's a little bit interesting right is that these two are both polystyrene number 6 if in my factory I made both of these products I would pull the resin from the same box these are not two different things these are the same thing once we've got air one dozen so then I get I'm trying out the skip stuff that's what I do I did have a note in here about the low energy so we our whole plant everything we're converting this from a plastic pellet to a foam tray for about 8 cents a pound so the electricity conversion cost in a single tray 454 grams in a pound 10 grams so what are you talking about 400 trays, no 40 it's tiny the amount of energy content in conversion is tiny which the reason I mention that is because some of the alternative products it's not tiny it's big and that would be kind of the drawing now this is we don't make these but it's just an example that's 3.5 grams and this is subject to abandon so this is foam polypropylene that's 10.5 grams so from an environmental perspective you ban something at 3.5 in your place with something at 10.5 why do people want this at 10.5 when I pick this up and I drink coffee in it my hand doesn't get hot I don't need to use two cups and I can drive from Canada almost to Albany and still have lukewarm coffee but what about this that is much better you dunk in donuts if you go in there this is really what people should be 100% here's the problem you go to dunk in donuts drop into yours and throw it away they have to they can't not do that so we could make that change I can't be walking in with a reusable cup and handing it to somebody in a restaurant no but I'm saying I hand this to Capitol grounds and other places down if they fill it right up but if the health department found out they would be in trouble I think you're right somebody is shaking their head no I'm saying you can't be walking in to a restaurant with something that could possibly contaminate other people's food okay so here's another one this one I got this stuff near my house so I didn't really get a chance to do what people in Vermont use and I did see where I had lunch yesterday they were sending take home and aluminum the environmental impact of aluminum is way up here mind that stuff the electricity they co-locate aluminum plants where there's big dams where electricity is essentially free electricity doesn't travel well if we get on with DC current instead of AC current back in the days of Westinghouse maybe so these aluminum plants get co-located where there's lots of power so this is a good one 4.6 for the base 1.6 for the lid just the lid for this one is more and this is not recyclable they got a polyethylene coating that makes them so that when you fill them with soup they don't fall apart by the time you get and can finish eating them and then I'm almost done I'm not going to take up tons of your time because stuff so speaks for itself that's a good lesson this is here's three different egg tartans of course this is the one that we make I cut a piece out of this because I had another interesting thing here which I'll share with you I took a piece of the molded fiber one out and I stuck it in some water and I took one of the polystyrene and I stuck it in some water and I couldn't help but think on the side of the road when I go pick this up I don't know six months later I'm probably going to pick the whole thing up and bring it home with me you know these are going to be letter this one I don't know I don't think it's as good what's this this is a piece of this it's this little missing piece by the way I don't know is it bad to have eggs go through with the molded fiber and recycling I don't know that what I can say is this is the one that's better for the soil in other words if they both were left out for a long period of time I don't think you, I don't know paper fibers you know occur in nature I don't know if this is in the water and fish are eating all these fibers is that worse than if this is in water and they're poking at them I'm not qualified to answer that what I can say is this is 14.9 grams this is 62 and a half I do know that when they fill these with eggs and take them down the road they can't put as many in a truck if they use these to the weight limit where they reach the weight limit plus the delivery to the egg factory right this is much heavier and then you got this there's people out there doing this this is 50 47.9 grams when you consider the label with it to me that's insane when you can do it with 14.9 and this would have been like 15.4 but I took a little out of there and then I consistently weighed what I had and so this thing right here is one that's important our company makes these and we make these and this is for fruit 90% of the guys in Bonacci and this is from the west coast in Washington and Oregon 10% is packed in this 10% gets packed in this because the skins are delicate and this doesn't work so that's the only reason that this is cheaper they got lots of wood fiber out in that area I guess and so that's pretty much what I had in terms of and one of the other things that people tell me is that this polystyrene is bad for human health and I can tell you that it's not we follow a program called GFSI Google Food Safety Initiative and there's companies called like BRC SQF American Institute of Bakery and what they do is they write a guideline that meets the requirements of the GFSI and then we buy that standard and then we adhere our process to that standard and then we pay somebody to come in and audit us against that standard I would say that's a form of self-regulation that is working because if we don't do that then we will not sell our products we won't sell our products we have to well Walmart won't buy your stuff if you don't have a certification and Pepperidge Farms won't buy your stuff anyway sweet and part of that process is the raw materials coming in the FDA approvals on the raw materials come in and us proving that we have it for every load it's looking at the manufacturing process all the things that we do and we pay a professional auditor to come in and do that does that certification process a life cycle now it does not it's only food safety only food safety I think some of our discussion has been not so much about the nature of the contact between the packaging and the food but what happens to the plastics after the environment biocumulate yeah and I I I mean the solid waste is a big deal and it's a huge deal you guys have really made some big steps you definitely are more recycling than I typically see all that I'm not a government affairs I don't do tons of this kind of stuff I made up all this stuff on my desk on Monday and last Friday one just one more thing and then I do have something to say to close try to wrap up this is what it looks like when we recycle it so inside our factory if you can imagine you don't make those you can imagine these are like in a web where there's a bunch of these in a web and then we trim them out the trim scrap so what we do is we chop up that web scrap and we get to this this is what we call this fluff and then what we do is we take that stuff and we run it through and we make what we call reclaim and then we take that reclaim and we stick that back into a machine and we make new material to do this we can't take post-consumer and well I shouldn't say that but in the I believe in the we buy recycled reclaim to make our egg cartons I just don't know if it's post-consumer I'm kind of new to the egg carton business the business that the technoplex bought from my family made the meat trace and I know we're required and in closing I would just say that if the committee is looking at a ban on polystyrene takeout I would just look to think that the items that are packed outside of Vermont like egg cartons and fruit and meat just be exempted from that it just adds an enormous amount of complication for a guy who's trying to sell apples and he's got this sensitive skin and the one thing that he knows it works is if you don't have to use anymore and so we'll have that and that is all I have to say does anybody have any questions if you have time or it's up to you guys but I think that was great and informative because I think a lot of people try to inside the paper because they think paper's better and once it's been coded it's not it's true very informative with the visual page can you see the stuff we're talking about I have pictures that I took of all of the stuff that I can send to you if you want to do a review of that the other thing I find interesting especially with the egg containers is I think a lot of people are asked to buy that heavy plastic one which sounds like it's the absolute word of the choice it's like eating Jerry's organic eggs that's the way of that I think you're right thank you so much for your help that was my pleasure we're aware that there's some complexity is this your first time here it's my first time to the state building it's not my first time to Vermont I've been up here as a kid doing some skiing I did some sailing on Malibu Bay last summer I enjoy coming here I particularly appreciate being included in this meeting I found it very interesting and informative pleased to be here we should have lunch with Jim with Harrison today okay excuse me you're in an honor roll class thank you I appreciate that so we're going to change beers a little bit and have some students are visiting with us today we have so if you can join us at the table and should I give a look sure more sage and Evelyn sage and Evelyn are two students from Bermburton Academy in Bennington County Representative James and I had the opportunity to meet them last week and this issue of plastics is an important one to them so they were kind enough to make the trip up today and to say a few words for us thank you so much for having us welcome to your same house yeah do you want to go first I brought coffee yeah thank you thank you hi my name is Evelyn Seidner and I am a junior at Bermburton Academy in Manchester and I am one of the 88 students involved in our schools environmental club and along with some fifth graders at our local elementary school we have been working towards passing a townwide ban on plastic bags in Manchester and as important as that is to me I think that having a statewide ban would be even more beneficial because it would cover more towns and I think that this ban would be supported by a large and growing number of our youth and as well as a lot of citizens in Vermont because I think that this would really uphold one of the values that I think Vermont has which is taking care of our environment which I think is really important to live here and plastic bags are very harmful to the environment because they are so plentiful and they are so light so they are very easily littered and they are one of the most common pieces of trash on the ground today and even if they are thrown away they never fully degrade and they become what's called microplastics and those can re-enter the system and go into our soil and our waters and animals can eat them and it can just keep causing more and more harm they single use plastic bags harm our environment when they are produced because they release toxic chemicals and they contribute to climate change and they kill our wildlife many animals think that plastic bags are food and when they do eat it they fill the stomach and they give the animal a sense feeling of full and then that leads to a very slow, very painful death where the animal starts themselves about even knowing it this is especially common in sea turtles and I know that Vermont is not in the ocean state but it's still all of our trash can lead to other places and it's just important to think of other places besides here and I really think that looking at the whole world and our place in it is really important so I think another really important part of Bill S-113 is that it would ban plastic straws too because they also have a lot of harmful effects on animals they're very similar to plastic bags and if an animal does eat it it can get clogged in their throat or their nostrils and rock their airways and cause them to suffocate and as I said before Vermont doesn't have any coast but we do have Lake Champlain and those animals who live there are still vulnerable to these same dangerous effects and impacts as marine life in the ocean and so if we did pass S-113 it would ban these really harmful death traps to these innocent animals and it would be a really important step in helping our earth and also there are other places around the world and this country that have successfully banned bags just yesterday Marilyn voted in the House of Delegates to they passed a phone bill that has also passed a similar version of that so now they're going to work together to finalize the bill before sending it to the governor so Vermont is not the only state trying to make these vital changes and by acting together we show the rest of the country how much this means to so many people and this kind of bill becomes that much stronger and it has that much more momentum by passing S-113 Vermont would be taking the right step in a very necessary direction if we want to save our earth and passing it could influence other New England states which would be really beneficial to the whole area and it could really reduce our emissions and our waste and hopefully one day plastics will be eliminated from the country because almost all plastics that have ever been made still exist today and if we keep making them and keep using them the problem is only going to get worse and I think we need to stop it before it's too late and every big change needs people to support it and I think Vermont is the perfect place to do that. Thank you. Hi. So I have some copies of what I'm going to take if anyone else wants one one I just want to start off saying that I'm Sage Waller I was born in Bennington and I've lived in Vermont all my life Banning plastic bags will happen. Single use plastic bags are evil and will eventually be banned everywhere I want to live in a place that doesn't sit back and wait for others to act I want to live in a state that doesn't wait until we are completely sure what's going to happen if we do what's obviously right I want to live in a place where we live out our values trusting that we have the support of the community to fall back on too I want to live in a place where everyone has a voice and even emerging voters are heard and taken seriously we know that banning plastic bags is important and we know it's inevitable so why are we waiting? Brattleboro did it, Wilmington did it Hawaii did it and California did it if something is important enough you won't let any excuse get in our way whether it's a potential lawsuit unknown repercussions or logistical complexities Banning single use plastic bags will have drawbacks but if we all know and accept that as a community and as a state I trust that we can come together and figure out how to make this work acting on values that our towns demonstrate will bring us together and create a singular voice of unity if we don't try to resolve issues that are voiced we can become a state that alienates in my town 5th graders have done so much work along with high schoolers along with a lot of other community members if this is pushed away without any more thought we will no longer be the trailblazing state that we have been in the past if we are a state that listens to the youth and hears everyone's voice Vermont will attract not only attract young people but strong powerful people that will never stop trying to find a place it can be we are a new generation who are going to be picking places to live and you guys have to start thinking about us differently we're not going to wait for our values to be put into legislation here while hundreds of other cities and towns and countries have already been doing so those towns have the same questions we have but what's different is that they weren't afraid of what might happen this is cutting edge and we'll have drawbacks but we can't sit back and watch others go in the right direction without even trying to do it ourselves if we keep ignoring progressive and innovative ideas that are bound to happen in the future no one will see themselves staying here to make a living or to raise a family as of 2015 Vermont has the second lowest birth rate in the country young adults will gravitate towards that state that value environmentally friendly policies you can trust that most of my generation will back me up on this you've seen it on TV there are a lot of projects and marches teaching students how to lobby and planning to run for office I'm 18 years old and a registered Vermont voter I'm going to college maybe in Vermont maybe in New England but after college I along with the rest of the young adults my age will be choosing a place to live thank you so much for having us I just want to say that again very well done very helpful thank you so you heard some of the discussion that while we were waiting to be on the table we haven't thought to we were talking about sorting out the complexities of polystyrene versus polyethylene coated paper versus yet another product so it's a little off topic for the plastic bag piece what do you ever thought about that I was hearing him say that and he like compacted it down and said we're contributing but so many other people are saying that like this is it but if everyone says that it's just going to grow it might look like this much how are you going to get your eggs in the supermarket there will be other ways I personally don't know but it's definitely very important the world is changing and so progressing just like with everything we've been making technology we don't need to rely on plastics we didn't have plastics before I was born we didn't have cell phones either you're right I think we're just progressing cell phones have rare material in them maybe we should give them up I think we should start but I'd be interested star phones and plastics well I think you know especially in this committee we end up with issues where you peel away a layer and you find another layer and you peel over that one and we keep peeling but we do need to make progress so we can be paralyzed well thanks so much for coming of course welcome to the stage we're going to be hearing from some other people as well but I'll just slight editorial side I mean the other people in the building last year most clearly made a big difference on the passage of the conference so I appreciate especially that you made this call and I want you to know that I would say the legislature is very interested in hearing from younger volunteers because we know we're building the laws that are going to be affecting the place we hope you'll be staying on you too I'm a junior all right well thank you both thank you so much thank you guys don't worry about that is it Peter Petter good morning Melinda Petter from Willis Stake chairman council members first of all before I start my presentation I want to say two things I'm apologizing for the cell phone I forgot to hand it off earlier and the other thing in reference to one of Kathy's comments about reusable bags I've been using my reusable grocery bags about eight years now at once or twice a week so it adds up to four hundred to eight hundred uses for my fabric grocery bags and they hold twice as much as a plastic bag weight and value today I'm representing myself plus a group known as sustainable Willis Stake plus many others who have co-signed a letter which I wrote and submitted to this committee supporting bill S-113 I love being a Vermonter I'm a fan of responsible convenience and I'm an advocate for nature so what to do about plastics nobody could rationally argue that we should all together stop using plastics it just won't happen we simply cannot stop and go back to before because we're awash in plastics plastic bags, bottles, clothes tools, medical supplies, Michael plastics plastics everywhere we look and unfortunately as we're learning weekly places we haven't been looking like in fish tissue in sea salt in our beer we did not know it was a problem and then we did and it's huge I'm not here to talk about the whole plastics problem just a few single use items those items we use for a mere moment and then far beyond our lifetime they may become an item of refuse in our natural environment some may ask why bother with all the hoopla banning a few single use plastic items or such a small part of the problem and that may be true however with my work as an energy consultant I know a little bit about small parts if I could convince a business owner to start addressing small parts from the adjacent lighting to LED lighting over here add a little insulation over there choose the energy stair appliance those small parts add up to something else a turn away from the problem and a turn towards a solution I never underestimate a small part it's the catalyst it's the thing which means that 10 years from now will be better than it would have been had we done nothing today I'm passionate about this particularly legislation I have flummoxed cashiers for decades long before it was so she acceptable to bring a bag back into a grocery store I was reusing doubled up paper bags you can have a new bag ma'am no thanks they offered no thanks they have been working the ones I have have been working just fine I was following an example set by my mom who was doing this half a century ago similarly I have been embarrassing my friends for years with my special request to hold the straw at restaurants and some others close to me have been delighted to receive a set of fabric grocery bags which I have hand sewn just for them this bill speaks to me and it speaks for me I want everyone to join my efforts to reduce single use plastic waste about a week ago I read up on senate bill s113 and I called Senator Lyons for some additional information feeling motivated to express my support I wrote a letter to this committee and forwarded it to the Sustainable Williston group and some friends looking for a few co-signers then wow I was unprepared for the response people signed on then they forwarded the letter to the friends who signed on and so forth I wrote a personal note back to each one by just the third day I was spending hours keeping up with the supporters on day 4 that letter was submitted to the chair and the committee assistant on Monday night four days just word of mouth and I'm still receiving emails from others who want you to know that they support this bill I'm humbled by the overwhelming positive response to the letter yet all I did was right the real work follows to this committee as you listen, assimilate, consider and legislate while you work please know that there is a huge amount of energetic support for the stated purpose of this bill and for any additional measures you deem appropriate to make it environmentally effective and equitable I represent the heartfelt enthusiasm of all those who contacted me over the past few days our collective wish be bold, be creative and be confident in your actions to protect Vermont's land, water and wildlife we, everyone who signed the letter we live here, we shop here, we work here we vote here and we have your back our wish for bill s13 make it happen thank you that's just a quick question so one area of concern I've heard from what will be the impact from lower income for farmers who might not necessarily have a bag of them in the store have you heard that kind of concern expressed in what you've thought about the solutions there may be many creative ideas out there I thought about that and the law has to be equitable I heard comments that you could charge a small amount for a paper bag still a lot of paper bags, they're not in the in the ban here I think that eventually people will they can use the paper bags I have some that are probably ten years old if you double bag and they work fine we will just adjust we will just adjust and people will somehow learn to make the exception just the ones that get the fabric bag and then we use it it is an adjustment maybe there has to be some accommodation for that but we can do it are you the sustainable wilson group worked on anything like for instance in middlebury there was a group that was helping promote the development promote the ask of the select board to then go on and write ordinance that advancing the waste plastic bag as part of their outreach to people they were also making their own bags is that something your group has worked on I'm just wondering if there are a lot of people out there who might actually pitch in for instance and help solve the problem by selling we haven't addressed that we did have a discussion a brief discussion about whether we should advocate for going to the select board to ask if we should start look at banning bags just in wilson but we thought this would be more effective to just more company has to deal with that statewide level any questions from us thank you very much for your time thank you so much so committee let's take a break till 10-15 we'll pick back up for almost time on our list and so thank you everyone we'll resume at 10-15 so why why don't you and conversations around the room and invite for the table come on so this draw nine why why don't we go to waste so you've been here this morning you've heard the conversation to introduce yourself to the committee and fill us in on what you're thinking about. I appreciate it. My name is Phil Rosensky. I'm here on behalf of the American Progressive Bag Alliance, the Trade Association, represents the manufacturers and recycles of plastic bags. I'm one of the members. The executive director couldn't be here. He had a death in the family, so I'm one of the members I'm filling in for him. The company I do work for is called Novolex. I'm the senior director of sustainability. We are a company that manufactures plastic and paper bags. We are a recycler of plastic bags. We have two facilities where we recycle and we manufacture other types of packaging as well. I heard a lot of interesting things that maybe I could help with in my role as a sustainability director, give you some more insights in what it means of the value chain lifecycle things. One of the things we do as a company is our company is focused on circular economy. I heard that this morning, we look at products where we want options. The reason we're on both paper and plastic is we want the option for different packaging to do what's right, not be stuck with one solution. So we have a look at things, how can we make things more sustainable and support a circular economy? There's a few things that when I heard this morning, I maybe wanted to help clarify some things. I've been asked to step in and testify here and there over the last 12 years while I've been doing this job. One of the common things I hear is the term plastic bags. And as I hear a lot of the debate and it talks about litter and the environment, I do want to highlight that that's one that makes me cringe as a researcher because we're not talking about plastic bags here. We're talking about plastic retail bags, not plastic bags. And there's a significant difference because plastic retail bags are a very small portion. The photos that you have there of the MRF facilities, we do work with MRFs to help educate the public to take plastic retail bags and other polyethylene films out. There's been several studies. Most of the film that you see wrapped around there isn't plastic retail bags. It's other plastic bags in film. And what they found is it's important to know this because where they have implemented policies like that, and I'll talk about it in a minute, a lot of the things, the goals that are sought don't occur because we're misunderstanding the data and we're misunderstanding what's going on. And most of it goes back to the fact that litter studies aren't granular enough and they talk about plastic bags and so they think we're gonna make such an impact and it's a small portion of it. So, when I've been working with this over the last, I'm just saying, so are you suggesting you should expand the definition? I think you'd be careful when you're looking at datasets. Are you looking at data that's relevant to plastic bags or plastic retail bags? And I'll cover that in a second why that's important. So over this last 10 years that I've worked on this on and off and again we work with people to develop solutions because we do recycle it, we do want the material back. We've learned a lot of things and really there's really three things that I think we kind of have realized with plastic bag regulation, plastic retail bag regulation. The first one is I think nobody can argue it and we would agree with the basic fact that drives this type of policy and that's you can ban anything or tax it and it goes away or people use less of it. And that's what becomes attractive about these policies is the idea of this ready solution. The fact of it is every place that's called it a success, these are the success because they implemented a ban and went away, they put a tax, they use less of it. But that leads to the second point. This discussion and you're hearing about it, it's not about plastic retail bags. What we're really talking about is litter, landfill, marine debris, our managing plastics. And when you look at this, we're always talking about the goals and the student success but very few locations have gone back and there have been some and have looked at this and what they find out is the goals aren't achieved. There's a lot of unintended consequences or because of lack of terminology, the marks were missed. For example, in Austin, they had a bag ban and what they found out was after they banned plastic bags about three years later they did a study of the waste stream and they found out the tonnage of reusable bags. By the way, about 99.9% of them are made of plastic whether it's made to look like cloth or film. The tonnage of reusable bags actually exceeded what they had of plastic retail bags. What's found out is the people that use reusable bags 100 times, 200 times and they do, we're already doing it beforehand and that's when we mandated that people use them less. And so what happens is where do those go at end of life and it wasn't planned for. San Francisco. So when people mandated using reusable bags, people use them less. Yeah, the frequency. Do you have those numbers? Absolutely, we do. Yeah. Yeah, a non-woven pod propolysis. But still, a drop there, does that mean that, I'd like to see it compared to what if plastic bags were not banned. Yeah, absolutely. So you don't have that with you? I don't have it with me, but we will get that to you. It's about 16 uses is what the average is. There was a consumer survey. If you pull people and ask them how much, there's that feel good moment. They'll say, yeah, I use it 100 times. But when they do consumer surveys, they find out that on sales, it's about 16 uses on average. The plastic bags were banned and they were being forced to use this. What were they? They were buying more. They were buying more of them. Buying more of the reusable. Yeah, the dollar bags that go out of the store, they buy them like crazy. Oh, the reusable bags. Yep, and they don't get used as much. When people act humanely and they forget them, they buy more and then they end up in the waste stream. It's an unintended consequence. But not like 300 million that were used last year plastic bags in Vermont. No, but the tonnage is exceedingly higher. So they do get 16 uses out of it, so they're less bags, but more plastic, is what had to happen. I'd like to see that research. Yeah. The second one was San Francisco. There's a group called the Bay Area Stabilization Agency. And as cities, basically it's a unifying district to help them address issues for the San Francisco Bay. And they had studied, they wanted to order the EPA to reduce the amount of litter going through storm drains into the bay. And so, as some cities were implementing bans on various products, such as plastic retail bags, they studied them before and after and they found out, yep, if you ban plastic bags, they didn't show up. But the daily tonnage of litter going through storm drains remained the same because what they found as replacement products still occurred, and I don't work with extended polystyrene, but that study covered that as well, but other products that replace it, other things went in there as well. And so what we're seeing is this common story that our intent, and that's what everybody here is talking about, is to see ways how can we reduce litter, landfill, marine debris, manage plastics better. And we're focusing on products rather than a broader one, but all the studies are showing very little gains in that area. The third thing is, is the- I just have a quick question about Austin, Texas. So I'm missing you surveyed a lot of programs across the country. Is Austin, Texas' data representative? Yes, it is. There was a study in Oregon about MRFs, of psyllism, or curbside sinisterine recycling that looked at the issue here, and they did a composition study and found out that plastic retail bags were such a small portion, there wasn't a lot to be made. One of the largest data challenges we're facing is for years, ocean conservancy, they do the annual international coastal cleanup. And part of the reason plastic retail bags became such a hot button 10 years ago is plastic bags are 10% of what they were finding on the beach. In 2013, that number dropped down to about 1%, not because there was a reduction in bags, it was the first year they had plastic retail as a separate category. And so it showed that to make a difference on bags and film, we've got to look at this as a broader category because we're leaving it behind. So first, we know, you know, we agree, bans and taxes work. But second is we find out we're missing the problem with these types of policies because we've gotten too granular rather than system. I hear some discussion and that's very heartening today. Here just talks about broader things that could be done. The third thing we see is, you know, they come with, you know, with consequences. I said, I work for a company that manufactures both plastic and paper and we do recycle plastic bags. We buy the grocery store material and process it. A plastic bag costs about a penny and a half. A plain paper bag costs around seven to eight cents without handles and you go over 10 cents with the handles. The cost to a grocery store can quickly be $16,000, $20,000 a month additional cost. When most people don't realize grocery stores make low margins, about 2%, you're quickly talking needs to increase sales by nearly a million dollars a month to cover these types of options at 2% margin. So it has impacts on a city by city level. People, because they do a lot of shopping in their cars when there's political boundaries. One of the options is sometimes people cross boundaries. Obviously, you get in your car, you go in your mouth, go a mile to the right. Sometimes you go a mile to the left and you're in a different district. That's another thing. Retailers saw a lot of unintended consequences. We are working, as the company that I work for, I said we're focused on circular economy and it's the plastic retail bag industry. Our retail bags, we're very interested in recycling programs. 30% of our manufacturing is made from recycled content. We do buy what comes back from the grocery stores. Our largest challenge to increasing recycling, there was three recent lifecycle assessments done. One was done in Denmark. One was done about a year and three or four months ago. One in Quebec that was published about a year ago and Clemson did one about four years ago. The Quebec one found that 79% of bags were reused as camliners. That's our biggest obstacle to recycling. It's not that people don't care. There's not much remaining. So, as you look at this, we would encourage everybody to also look, I think you mentioned earlier, peeling back the layers of the onion. There's a lot of things that seem like quick and easy solutions. They do often miss the mark because we're really talking about the broader topics, our environment, managing plastics and figuring that out, but also with costs and unintended consequences, which we hope aren't overlooked as well. It is a very complex onion, to say the least. On the unintended consequence, one of the concerns people raise is plastics don't, like other natural materials, they don't decompose to a level where they reenter the food chain in a tree, a new plant, et cetera, and you can bio-accubulate these micro plastics. So, over time, he's creating, in essence, permanent pollution or the permanent challenge right there. Have you looked at the impact of those plastics, human and animal health, plant health, et cetera? No, we understand that. That's why in the near term approach we have is we are working, you know, the fabric dealers, we work with them to get their recycling. We don't want that to happen. It is a broader issue than any of the items you're talking about today. When you talk micro plastics, you're going way beyond packaging because the vast majority of it isn't packaging related that you're talking about today. Again, one of these, is it really solving that problem and how are we approaching that from a larger approach? There was an initiative that was launched last month, the plastics industry is trying to find ways to get engaged more with that. Again, we do recycling and part of what we do to help with that is use recycled content. We're trying to create more demand, pull that out of the system and back into product. Any questions for Mr. Rosenski? If you could send along some of the studies or links that you were talking about, that'd be great. Yep. We're also aiming towards creating a working group and that would seem like a place that would naturally evaluate those kinds of studies. And that's one thing I think that would be important, Senator Bray, is to make sure that we have some folks that know the industry on the working group. Because that show and tell that we just had kind of flipped what I would naturally think in my head upside down. So I just think that's something that's not yet included where we've got to need to make sure that perspective is part of working with. Yes. Yeah, I mean, we're after fair, full, balanced learning on the whole topic, not be judging the outcomes. Yeah, we would like to help as much as possible. Again, these are studies done by cities in Miss Powell. If you'd rather send you their information than hear from us, obviously. People don't prefer to hear it from us. We wish they would listen as well, but we find it's better to get you the studies done by other government agencies. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Chair, may I submit a testimony? We have two fifth graders over here, also from Manchester. Is it okay if we just submit their testimony? They get some work on this also. We have a little window room on the schedule, and so if you want to talk to the committee. Well, I think that would be best. God would be infuriated by Bennington County. I'm not quite yet, I think, but yeah, just in case we have time, we might. Thank you. So let's pause just for a moment, and we have council scheduled. If we could let council in the door. That would be helpful. This is Michael, the lady out there. He probably ran away, he probably has got 12 other days to do. Yeah, crack the window. To find my way through, okay. Mr. Ross, help me, Alison Ross. The scheme is on the phone. Mr. Christman? Ah, Christman, sorry, yeah. Oh. So, that chair in the corner is council 113. My name's Keith Christman. I'm Managing Director of the Plastic Food Service Plastic Group at the American Chemistry Council. We represent manufacturers of plastic food service, including polystyrene foam food service. Although we support reducing litter and marine debris and waste, we oppose that 113, because it won't accomplish those goals. We're committed to ending plastic waste in the environment. In fact, our industry recently helped founded a new organization called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. This new 501P3 Group launched in January. It is the $1.5 billion fund. It will help put in place critically needed waste management in rapidly developing countries, particularly in Asia. The focus of the work will be in five key countries in Asia that account for 60% of plastic waste going into the ocean. Sort of by contrast, you all should know that the United States as a whole accounts for less than one half of one percent. So the focus is on where it needs to be on rapidly developing countries in Asia that lack basic waste management. 90% of people in these countries, 50% of the folks in the country don't even have per-site collection or any collection of their waste. So that waste is getting out into the rivers, into the oceans, and becoming big problems from a very perspective that I'm sure you all have seen. Can I ask quick question? You just said I didn't catch the full statistic we were sharing. So one half of one percent of all marine waste originates in the U.S., was that what you were saying? Yes, that's the case. There are five countries in Asia, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, and Sri Lanka that study from Science Magazine in 2015 estimated accounts for 60% of the waste. The United States accounts for less than one half of one percent, according to the same study. Okay. So the focus of the alliance then plastic waste that I mentioned, a $1.5 billion fund that plastic manufacturers and chemistry companies and the entire value chain are involved in investing in. The focus of that fund, $1.5 billion, is going to be to invest in city waste management in those large source countries. That said, here at home, we do have work to do as well. We established the American Country Council to establish circular economy goals, and those are by 2040, we'll recycle, recover, or reuse all plastic packaging, and by 2030, all plastic packaging will be recyclable or recoverable, and that's for the entire United States. So we have work to do to accomplish those goals, and we'll be very active in reaching in the hope to partner with Vermont and other states in reaching those goals. So, you know, American plastic makers are committed to ending plastic waste in these farms. We think that's very important. Unfortunately, this bill will not accomplish that goal. This bill instead will cause switch to alternative products who will actually have greater environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. In case of polystyrene foam, for example, this energy use increases by about 50%, and it increases greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in other states looking at it, which is the paper, but that's true for many alternatives, other alternative materials as well. So Vermont should conduct a life cycle assessment if it's going to be considered this kind of approach to alternative, to make sure that you don't encourage people to use things that are actually worse for the environment or increase greenhouse gas emissions, for example. It's also true that generally the alternatives are not recyclable or compostable in many cases, and often in the case of composting, food service is not generally collected for composting. So alternatives also, you should be known, won't reduce litter. Studies have been done before and after vans on polystyrene foam, particularly in San Francisco, show that, well, polystyrene litter goes down. The alternative product, like cold paper, coffee cups, increases by more of the amount that the polystyrene foam litter goes down. Often people misperceive these alternatives as biodegradable, and they're more likely to litter them. For this reason, the California Water Board rejected the use of vans in accomplishing and implementing the trash regulation throughout the state of California. The decided vans were not the right approach to implement throughout the state of California for implementing the stormwater trash regulation. So alternatives for foam should also double the cost for restaurants and for consumers. So what we would be doing by implementing this is actually charging consumers more money for products that actually increase the environmental impact. So that's barely not the right approach. When it comes to straws, we think a better approach would be to adopt California's approach of straw time request. California adopted this approach because it reduces unnecessary use of straws. Makes us all think about it. Do we need a straw in every situation? Where's the sit-down restaurant? Why do we need a straw? That's your case with that kind of legislation where you ask people to think about it. Do you ever ask for a straw? They can have one. This is one of them automatically provided. One of the benefits of this kind of legislation is it allows for families with small children or for people who are going to be driving to have a straw when they need one. It also causes people to think about whether they need one. A ban won't accomplish that thing if you're change. A ban would just cause immediate switch to alternatives. And in the case of alternatives for straws, I've weighed some of the alternatives and compared them to plastic straws and they tend to weigh about three times as much. So they're gonna have a higher impact on the environment. And they're also, they're also, this policy policy doesn't cause you or change how they use them. So it's likely to become trash or later. With respect to the ban, the other one thing that makes your dog show consider is re-cycling of other polyethylene film product wraps. When bags are banned, at times we've seen the grocery stores collecting other polyethylene film at the front of the grocery store, things like bread bags or dry things bags or wraps or wraps pieces. So those things can be recycled at the front of the grocery store along with their plastic bags and they may have to do products like additional film or trans-decent boards or products like that. The second board is the last for decades. So we're concerned about the ban on bags could have the adverse impact of reducing collection at grocery stores of other film plastics and also increased contamination in the cereal recovery facility that people then don't know what to do with their other product wraps. So with summary, bans are not the right approach. We think they will increase greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and weight. Therefore, we oppose this legislation. Do you all have any questions? Anyone in the committee have a question? Okay. No questions. So thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you again. Have a good day. So I wanted to pause for a moment. We have counsel with us. Originally when we scheduled, we asked you to come in. It was because we were, I was hoping that we might be at a place of doing some adjustments to language, editing as a committee with you and making some edit requests for tomorrow. The things that I'm hearing. So I don't think we're quite ready to pass those along but just to give you a heads up and I wanted to pause and talk as a committee. I think the thing that we, my sense of where we're heading is that the area that we want to do the most work on is rewriting the section on what that work and group will do. Who's on it? Having a sort of an ordinary legislative lead head so we have one or more members of House and Senate on it to build out the membership of the panel. So we make sure we hear from all the parties that we think we ought to get information from and that the shift is from maybe a narrow focus on a particular product to say, can we look at packaging more broadly and extended producer responsibility programs and how they might work with packaging. So if you have language around, I don't know how we even define packaging legally yet so maybe if you can start either thinking about drafting along those lines and then I'd like to catch up with you later today and bring once we've done, ferry you over some more details so that we can get to the draft to look at tomorrow. Is that possible? Sure. If you let me go now. Yeah. Yeah. We heard it. Thank you very much. Okay. Okay. Just on the fly. Kind of here. All right. So we, thank you. So we've had other people come into the room and wanted to invite other people to speak to the committee while we're doing this grand tour. So they're a pair of students or would you like to come and join us at the end of the table like the other students were here just a little while ago to talk to us for a couple of minutes. Come in at the same minutes per minute. Come on up. For a big deal. Yeah. This is like having a conversation with your neighbors so we'll have to be serving in the legends like that. So just tell us, Oh, sorry, go ahead. Yeah. I'm going to say if you could introduce yourself tell us where you came up from and over from and then share what you're thinking about with the committee. What are you wanting to talk to us today? My name is Milayla Green and I'm from Manchester. You're from Manchester, okay? I'm from Manchester. I'm also from Manchester. I used to run chainsaw quite a bit and I'm a little hard to hear you. If you could speak up, that'll help you sit right up even though that won't amplify. Okay. So just tell us why you did what you did and what that piece of paper is in front of you. This is a letter that everyone in the fifth grade at men's our school has written. Like we split into groups and we all had a part like some people worked on what had happened. Like it was all on what had happened since the last time we had been to our select board in Manchester. And we were just basically writing about like, like we have, I think there's five paragraphs and each one has its own topic of what we had done. And like we did a lot to try and pass the ban and we keep urging the select board but they kind of don't agree with us. Some people don't, some of them do. So we're just trying to like keep urging them until they officially pass the ban in our town. Was there a vote in Manchester? And I know you're teachers here also. Yes. So what was the vote about in Manchester? So we went to the town meeting and to Miss Nicholson, our teacher and one other person in our grade read this letter to like the town, in the town meeting and then they had a vote after to see who would want to urge the select board and who wouldn't and through most of the people said yes. To urging the select board to do what? To keep moving forward with the ban and urging them like the more pressure we put on them and the more we keep urging them, the more they're going to feel that we should pass this ban. Do you know what the result of the vote was? How did that play out? We were both busy that day and couldn't make it but Miss Nicholson, our teacher had recorded it and she didn't record it. Like Jeanette was there, the local TV and they were recording it. And if you listen, you can hear mostly the yeas. But there was a couple. There were a couple of people who said no and didn't agree with what we had said. So you didn't have a data voted and count ballots. It was a voice vote on the town meeting. And so I guess it was the conclusion in the end that the select board, the town was instructing the select board to go ahead and look at creating an ordinance. Is that what that said? Yes, I'm sure. Can you guys speak a little bit about why you want to stand and say we use plastic bags? They did a lot of research with that one. After all the research we had done and we've learned about all the harm they have done to our world, I've seen things like in here somewhere it said if we don't ban these now, plastic bags will still be around by the time our great great grandkids die. Like when that by the time that happens, plastic will still be in the ocean. It'll still be all over our land. And but if we don't do anything, but if we do, we can stop that. And the animals won't be getting hurt. We won't be getting hurt and the environment will be better. Yeah. And then it also says in here that we use five trillion plastics bags worldwide each year in a year. So we just want to like, we're trying to ban them because we know that they're hurting our environment and that if we don't, we can't, they will be around until like our grandchildren are like 40 or I think it's like 40 or something like that. So you've heard us talking with different people about what would we do instead of just using the single use plastic bags? What were you, what was, what have you thought about and what were you recommending? We had like thought of like working with one of our teachers at our school who like, she's a really good like seller and stuff and like sewing and hand making some of our own reusable bags. Or like we tell like the stores that like we should get, they should have reusable bags if they don't already for people to use. But that way everyone can have a reusable bag to use and you just reuse it over and over again and eventually you won't need plastic bags anymore. And we could do paper bags too, but reusable bags would be more effective than paper bags because paper bags would still, they're still kind of putting bad things in our earth in some ways. Well, thank you very much. I don't know if you were in the other, were you in the room where the other students were? Yeah, okay. So the thing I'd say to them that I want to make sure that you hear is that we really appreciate you making a trip up and coming to talk to us. You may not be open up to vote, but we also know we work for you and every legislator works for everyone in Vermont. And so it's really great to have you making that trip and we appreciate that your class is thinking about how to be good citizens in the state. So thanks for doing this. I'd like to give their class a couple things to think about. Okay. Do you guys have cell phones yet? What are they made of? Plastic. Every cell phone has rare earth minerals in it. Rare earth minerals in this cell phone, supposedly they have to dig up over 500 pounds of the earth in the mine that they get those from to get the few little specks of rare earth minerals that are in here. So I think it'd be a great thing for you guys to look into in your class at what is happening in places in the world where they're mining the things to build these. Because they are just terrible to the earth where they're mining them. Meaning there can be sunsets for those spots possibly. But I think that's a great thing. Well one thing we find moment in this is whenever we look at one little piece of an issue we find that there's a lot of other connections around it. And the other thing that makes me wonder is if plastic bags last a thousand years or all those generations, does that mean all the people walking around picking up dog poop in plastic bags are preserving it for a thousand years? I don't think so. That would have been a question for one or two. It's a real question. Well what kind of bags do we use at our school for composting? Oh those compostable bags. Compostable bags. It's good to also be used to pick up dog poop. Yes. And there's also a question about some of the compostable bags actually don't totally break down and they leak of microplastics in the soil. So you have to be real careful about which kind of compostable bags you pick as well. Yeah, we have many good technology. Yeah. Thank you both very much. Thank you. Thank you guys a lot. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. I still want to answer the dog poop question. Hi. Hi. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. I'm holding that. During breaks I heard from one or two more people that would like to speak to the committee while we're on the tour, on the big tour today. Would you like to join us? What do you think? Just introduce yourself in the record and say who you're representing and what concern you want. Thanks. Thanks for the time. Matt McMahon with MMR. And we're working with the Theater Owners of New England as association of movie theaters across New England also in Vermont. And would like to speak specifically to the portion of Bill pertaining to straws. The issue that we see here is that while clearly restaurants make use of straws in certain ways, movie theaters are a little different in that they first of all, you don't get your drink brought to you in a well-edited area. And even in restaurants where you kind of pick your stuff up at the counter and bring it to your table, it's a different situation in a movie theater where it's dark, you have, you know, a plight of stairs usually to get up, you know, to your seat. And that in itself poses an issue for theater owners because it can lead to, and first of all, messes but on a concrete floor, a slip and a fall in the dark. If straws aren't available, you can provide a lid but when you have a large container with ice, you take the lid off and spill it everywhere. It's especially for children that could be an issue. Cold. Yeah, cold burns, yeah, exactly. So that could be an issue as well. So I know that there's an allowance for folks with disabilities to request a straw. And we would hope that in the situation of a movie theater where you're not having your drink brought to you, that there would be the ability to have a consumer ask for a straw. Theater owners have considered using paper straws. The issue with paper straws or, you know, rice straws, alternative straws, people that have used them, is they're great for 30 to 45 minutes. They work as intended, but if you're sitting, you know, in a two and a half hour movie, you'll have a hard time using it at the end of the movie because they tend to soften up, close up. So that's kind of what they have to say. So if you're eating a small list of movie buyers that they can't get the straw just by a 20 ounce plastic bottle of soda or water? They could. One of the, that's it, did well drink. So that the well drinks go away because there's no proper way to do it. Well, you know, you can go like this. You know what I'm saying? I mean, seriously. I'm gonna be clear with that. But no, I just want to be friends in reality. You're right. You're right. But if you're using a paper cup, Brian, the same thing happens to the great paper cup, this happens to the paper straw. The end of a two hour movie, your paper cup is starting to be as loose as a noodle and you're having kids pick them up with no cover. But this bill says it's off. This bill, as I recall correct me if I'm wrong, it's completely by request, so I mean, it's not gonna. So it's, for everyone, it's not, well, I don't know. Right, so the bill speaks to somebody requesting a straw if they have a disability. I think we were talking about the possibility of changing that. Yeah, absolutely, which we would support. So I just wanted to know. So the movie theater people would be okay. That would be a good improvement. Yes, the theater owners? Yeah. And to your point on 20 ounce drinks, they don't stay cold as long and there's also a storage issue. If everybody came in to movie theater asking for a cold 20 ounce drink, it would be a challenge to be able to serve those. Just when you're at the movie theater looking behind the counter, usually there's a small cooler. There's not a lot of space behind the counter. And it's cheap as there to make some sort of. That's why it's very cheap to mix that soda, pour it, it's usually the largest margin product in the rest of town. Yeah, it's huge. Any other questions for, okay? Thank you. Thank you very much. We need to make your cupboards that have a sippy top, like you get a sippy cup. It's supposed to probably be one or the other. Of course not. Of course not. It says the cupboards drop most of it. Permanent sippy cup. Thank you. Bring your own sippy cup. Sorry. Anyone else? So again, because drafting is being done for us while we're here, we have the luxury of having more time than originally thought. Well, I'd love to if it makes sense, just touch it, touch base with everybody on the committee to see where people are on this. So that, you know, I think some people are concerned. So maybe we do a little straw bowl or however. I'll speak for me, I'm fine with the bags and straws. I have no concerns about the public hearing person. I just think we might be looking at any wise pound foolish on the whole life cycle. Even the working group here dancing? Yeah, I'm okay. I'm moving forward. Working group. You like the working group. Right, that's right. Anything and everything. Yeah. Right. But I wouldn't ban it at this point. Right. I don't mean anything. But are you okay with bags and straws? With bags? Yeah. Just ban it on that right now? Yeah. I'll have to think about that. Is that a yes? I'll have to think about that. I'm not ready to quit yet. But we've got benefit out of Brian ever. So this might be my chance. This is a big moment. And you could get an answer to that special question you had. That can't be it. Yeah, I'm good. He's gonna work on it. I'm good with bags and straws. I like the working group. It is complex. All the other additional things. How could we possibly start to do this? And I think putting that group together, I think Senator Rogers is right. Get all sorts of people on there to have that conversation. Senator? I was impressed with the gentleman that came in with all the products. And this is like global warming. We can put together working groups and set deadlines and pet ourselves on the back. It's like global warming. We haven't acted on our own deadlines. So whatever step we take should be a real one. So you would for a good worker, we just say ban all. No, I was impressed when we came to some of the energy you got. Right, yeah. And if we're taking up more landfill space or less landfill space and use more. Or resources to make something. I was wondering about it if you would. No, I think we all were. And that kind of person, Senator Rogers point should be on this. Yeah, yeah. Have this kind of conversation. They're not doing one thing. They make sure they're making decisions based on science and reality, not on perception. Right. But these uncertainty shouldn't be an impediment to setting out to make some real changes. Okay. And I would say to be honest, I don't think the United States has a great job with packaging compared to Europe and other countries. And I think there are possibilities that could come out of this new innovative sort of ways to package. So are we. You know, we talk about public private partnerships and private organizations that produce all this stuff the way they want to. And then the public is supposed to go around and pay to clean it up. And that's, that's, that needs to change. And again, the gentleman that went through the primer with different weights and volumes might be a very, very more thoughtful way to move ahead. So, yeah, I hear that and appreciate it and the notion of, one challenge is when we privatize profits and socialize profits. So, and that to me seems like the whole notion of getting ahead of it, looking at packaging in a more proactive way. So, in terms of the packaging, and so the draft in it, we question might be about keeping up the work in the week, expanding the membership. So we talked about coming from the package. I'm serious, I think it would be good that for somebody on this, at each of the centers in the house. I'm not saying on summer studies and working weeks. Okay, so we don't put you on it if you vote for it. Well, you'll have to report it. Well, so here's the bill itself and the language around who's on the working week right now is. I know it was crazy that there's that, you know, but. Right, you know, but it's just, you get too very to the group and leave the other group. I can do this, but. Although I think the advantage is when we have someone on the table, then the information comes back into the committee, especially if it's a working group from year one, year two, and a single by-hand. But, so we have a league of cities and towns, someone from the plastics industry, my retail and grocers association, municipality that's been implemented in a bag, banging a solid waste hauler. Seems like from what we've heard, there should be someone who's operating. Murph, who we're leaving out. You got somebody. Well, people like this. Somebody who knows the industry. The industry. The industry. So that's environmentalists. Environmentalists, yes. For science, yeah. One environmentalist. He likes to pretend, but he really actually is a shade environment. I'll tell you right now. Glory to the light of the oven. Can we specify names? Are you getting all this? Well, and then of course, in terms of, we de-cease leadership on this stuff, running the current system and knowing where the opportunity is. Celebrate districts. And the solid waste districts, yeah. Maybe from a large district that's someone who's operating a smaller system. Preferably in the Northeast Kingdom. Any other suggestions for who ought to be, you know, there's two as well. So we'll see a draft. We can edit an extract. People think about it. So I'd ask people to think about who's present or not present here. The thing is, any panel can always be, will be inviting in plenty of witnesses. So you don't need to be on the panel in order to affect the proceedings. So I'll meet up with Mr. O'Grady this afternoon to make those requests back on the straw language that we heard heard that by request was worked better for. I think that's gonna cut down, practically. The number of requests or the impact of it, including everyone. I think a lot of people just won't request them. Or we can evaluate. This part is that the point of sensitivity I heard was that if it's a formidable reasons that people would need them, that it puts that person along with the doctor's note. I mean, right, right then. So retailers don't want to be responsible for evaluating whether or not you're presenting a legitimate reason for requesting such a straw. So I think we leave that call of occlusion support out. We respond to both sides of the equation. Senator McDonald. So I think some of the, you're putting a group together, but the areas that ought to be, I also want to acknowledge that Champlain District for having helped us understand things that I did a couple hours ago. We ought to be looking at landfill production by volume. And we ought to be looking at the energy that's used to manufacture the product. And we ought to be looking at the releases to the atmosphere of the different choices. And the last one is most likely to be blown in the wind, but just the litter of issue. And some of the conceptions that we have coming in here were a little bit reorganized, not diminished, but reorganized. And I've been thinking the last few weeks as since this first came up, that all the tasks performed by plastic were performed by something else 50, 60 years ago. But the amount of weight and cumbersomeness, glass is enormous. And you know, you go from a world of three billion people up to eight, you start taking shortcuts. There's your biggest problem right there, too many people. So I haven't seen any plastic caskets yet. Or maybe just having grates. You don't notice it, but it may close in on that. So anyway, those would be the questions. Okay, while we're talking about, right, the charge to the committee would be written. So we're talking about exploring the extent of proofs of responsibility and managing broadly. So you just make sure that it's obvious that when you say length of impact, right? Energy use is in life cycle analysis, energy use. It prevents these great litter. Anything else that I missed one? Most likely to be fallen in the way. Okay, all right. Anything else that people can think of that we're missing in terms of what we should be asking the working group to look into? Can I make a few clarification? If you can just stay your name for the record. Sure, I'm Lynn Glebens. I'm representing myself, but I do teach a pollution class at the University of Vermont. And I just want to clarify the point about the egg cartons in the water. So the one was actually breaking down, the fiber, the cardboard one was breaking down versus the other one would be persistent in the environment. So from the environmental perspective, the cardboard one would be friendlier. It would go back to organic matter and become a plant. Whereas the other would not. And I just wanted to also make the point that there was a study done, and as of 2015, of all the plastics ever produced, only 9% has been recycled. So we're continuing to add to this burden, our plastic burden on the planet. This is not unlike other pollutants that we've had in the past, like say DDT, which is a chemical pollutant, which we didn't. It was persistent. It was accumulating. It was harming wildlife. And it was traveling the globe. And plastic is very much. And then just one other clarification on the dog poop bags. I actually bury my dog's poop, not near my vegetable garden. And I do have a little bit of a struggle with this, but there are compostable bags. And if a bag is certified compostable, then it should break down. Not always in a landfill, but in a municipal composting facility. So that's complicated, but there's a lot of confusion about that because there's degradable bags. So those break down into smaller pieces of plastic. And it's the micro plastics that really are harmful and even attract other pollutants in a marine environment, such as persistent organic pollutants that are already there, can pull them out. And the micro plastics can be a way for those existing pollutants to enter the food chain. So. Because the micro plastic becomes a carrier. So I'm adding to my illicit environment to the past, persistence in the environment, and health impacts. Yes. Great. And if you have information that you think the committee might want to look at, if you send us an email, put links in or something like that, we'll happily add it to our growing section of the website that includes all our plastics testimony. So with that. I brought in, a few weeks ago, those biodegradable plastic bags in my co-op that apparently didn't throw them out. I need one. Yeah, I do. I probably left mine around the world of place, and I apologize for being out and getting pulled out for a few minutes. It's been a discussion of our posts and the ability to, the cost of replacing with the biodegradable, or to turn out that you use more corn and fertilizer or what the various trade are. I'm sorry. They're usually out of corn, right, Tim? Yeah. A lot of the biode, like the biotalo is corn, corn-based, so that's not ideal either. And then probably most of them don't get composted because they're really only compost, compostable in a facility, and we don't have enough facilities. We're lucky to have that in Chittinburg County, but not everybody. So the term biodegradable, I'm not, I mean, so this is where we need to get under the hood up legal definitions of technology. I'm not sure what biodegradable means, is it being introduced to smaller and smaller pieces that we can't do but it's still persistent, or does it mean it goes back to its two or more molecules that can, that re-entered, right, so far? A chain, wave of life. So compostable has standards around it, it has to break down into these, into these elemental compounds that would enter back into a natural environment within a certain amount of time under certain conditions. So there's, there are standards for that. Where as biodegradable, kind of more like the word natural, like there's, there's not, you know, like a piece of wood is biodegradable, but you're not going to put that in your home compost pile and expect it to break down along with your manant. Anyone else in the room have any comments on either the composition of the group or the topics they're charged to look into? So I'll hand over there. I was just going to add the other issue with. If you can just identify yourself with that. I'm Judith Alksberg from Randall. I'm sorry, I need to change. Judith Alksberg from Randall. The additional issue with biodegradable or uninsured compostable is the chemicals that are added to these biodegradable bags. That are actually perhaps just as dangerous as to, you know, putting in compost as anything else that's chemical. So you don't want to put those in your compost. I think you're thinking of degradable. Right. And that's that. It's just degradable, which means they break down a smaller piece of plastic, which are maybe okay if you run out of it. And that's part of the problem is that not, consumers don't understand all the different classifications. And even the compostable stuff doesn't compost unless you're composting it properly. All right, UVM is using entirely a starch-based set of forks knives for their cafeteria. And I believe they're moving to their patients as well. Has the problem of kind of getting soft like you've talked about. But again, the question is, how much do we know about what's actually in these kind of alternative products that we're eating with? Right. They actually are a fairly big piece of litter on UVM's campus, these shards of- And what's wrong with real silverware? I would prefer real silverware. I just teach the class. I don't make food and policy. I think one issue is that students- Grab it now. They take them to, or they end up in the trash. And so it's expensive. But there are lots of green little shards of these pieces of color. Not good. Too many people. We have to, we have to do a grand-bent, a grand-solid grand-bent. Okay, my name is Lindy Sardin from Martin, and I work with a dumb organization. One of the people on your committee might be somebody that's in education, because I'm always impressed by the young people who are coming in and really setting the pace for what we all need to do. And I think that education, in terms of like, we all need to know what is biodegradable and what does that really mean, and we do need to know what we can recycle because it varies across the state. And I'm just thinking long, longer term changes in solid waste management so that we could have communities be more involved in educating their population and doing things like if you're wondering how to get your eggs, take some home, you go to your neighbor who grows eggs. We're lucky in Vermont that we have a lot of that. And you bring your egg carton and you bring your mug of coffee and you bring it from home and you use that when you go to the movie theater. So that's just an area I'd like to see happening more. Down in some more public health, then. Yeah, I think that for getting your education coming, but oh, the, I'm just going to find more on that, representative from the city of Sparrow where that came up in protest, when he said one of the things that happened with their program was it was very successful and surprising with a few pickups and all the things. And when we asked him why, he thought it was because they did an extended period of very active outreach and education to both the retail community and to citizens of Canada. So by the time that they had money to affect, it was really not a surprise for them. One in almost everyone is ready to go on the next day. Any other suggestions? Like, well, so this is Jameson. You've been listening to all this. Are we leaving out anyone out from the panel so far that you can think of, and because you know this world better than I think the rest of it, certainly the committee. With respect to the panel and what should be on it, I think we've got a good list. I think all the stakeholders are represented. And in terms of the charge to the committee, you've heard the things we're accumulating. I'm hearing it get longer and longer and longer and the one challenge will be, you know, this is a one summer? How many summaries are we doing? It'll be challenging to address a large number of issues in a one summer committee. So I would be judicious on what charge you give the committee. The other thing too is, you know, in terms of imagining, we're going to be asking for recommendations even if it's possible. We're going to draft legislation or stuff like that. And one of those things might be that we need to have an ongoing process that would keep on working through all these other details so that we couldn't necessarily get to a certain amount. Senator Rogers? So my question about these summer study committees always goes back to, so if the summer study committee comes to the legislature and says, this is what we found out, this is what we recommend, then we start holding testimony, do we end up jumping through all the same hoops we would have jumped through without the expense and workload of the summer study committee? Sometimes, I mean, sometimes yes and sometimes no, but I find a lot of times the study committee comes back and the legislature basically looks at the report and starts from scratch anyways. And so I've never been a big fan of the summer study committees though, some of them have come back with some good and relevant information. A lot of them seem to me to be kind of a waste of taxpayer money, so. It's an interesting observation given what's going upstairs with F-250 right now. Right, exactly. I mean, although I'm glad we met this summer and we did this work, but it does, it seems to me, and again, just anecdotally, one of your, they're kind of repeating the process. So does it make more sense for us to figure out how to schedule in the process and do it? And then we ask all the experts that we want to ask. I'm just, I've never been a big fan of the summer studies. The other thing that, or just make sure they're so directed that, again, just to center writer's point, it's we're getting information, we're going to take that rather than repeat it. Like I'm saying, the whole process, because I could see us bringing all those people back in. Well, so it's kind of a good point. The most successful one that I've seen were charged with very specific deliverables, like draft legislation, for instance. I think it's the closest to things you come in. It gives you the foundation of ability. Yes, you'll end up taking testimony, but it reminds me of when people are cooking, you're going to get all your ingredients prepared, ready, and then you don't start, you turn on the stove and then go to the grocery store. You get everything, you know. I was wondering if there could be some certain questions specific to the group, you know, that, again, we could get and we could, again, can take their work, so anyhow. So I'll work with you on this. Mr. Grady, get an extra, and then we can respond to that. I'm not interested in wasting time or downing for sure. But I agree, we'll have, we'll end up with a responsibility at the end of the committee just to hear enough testimony to validate any kind of recommendations we would hear anyway. So there's going to be some duplication of the question, as to what you're doing, I think, in an effective way. Do you have your hand? I'm hoping, this is due to that sort of reason, I'm hoping that the committee is doing two things at once, which is taking the long view, looking for a study, whether it's in the, you know, in the summer committee or in this committee. But I also hope, very strongly hope, that there is a push and hope, I hope, that this committee and the whole legislature will move to very specific action this year, hopefully if not, you know, on the bad issue and on straws. And it's not because those particular things are the absolute thing to solve right now. As we all know, we're a drop in the bucket as far as the ecology of the world goes. But my sense is that if we, as Senator McDonald said, if we can't move on such kind of tangible, reasonable solutions that we all kind of agree on, if we can't do that, I just don't see any hope for dealing what's coming down the pipe with the broader, much more, much huger issue of global warming. Water, you know, more pollution, agriculture, all of it. And I think that that is what the youth is looking for. They're looking for some kind of action that says, aha, we're taking a step. And so, do it. Do straws, do, you know, the styrofoam, if it's doable in your bill this time, because it will mean a great deal to all, you know, to all of us. And with that, and if there's any other comments from committee, thank you. We are done for today, so thank you, everyone.