By Nick Pedone/Broadcast version by Mary Schuermann Kuhlman

Reporting for the Kent State-Ohio News Connection Collaboration

To help protect the environment, three Ohio communities have passed bans on single-use plastic bags, but now state legislators are trying to keep the bans from going into effect.

Orange Village, an eastern suburb of Cleveland with a population of about 3,300, was the first community to pass legislation successfully banning plastic bags, like the ones found in grocery stores, in 2018.

“There were a lot of us on council, starting with Council President Brandon Duber, that wanted to do something to something to help the environment and set an example to our peers,” said Orange Village Councilman Scott Bilsky, who personally reached out to smaller businesses in the community to make sure they supported the ban. Just last month Cuyahoga County and Bexley, a Columbus suburb, passed similar bans.

However, some state lawmakers feel as if these bag bans have a negative impact on small businesses. They argue that plastic bag bans force merchants to spend more money on paper bags, which are more expensive than the customary plastic.

Ohio lawmakers have introduced House Bill 242, a corresponding bill that would prevent local bans or taxes on plastic bags.

The bill states that the proposed legislation will “authorize the use of an auxiliary container for any purpose, to prohibit the imposition to a tax or fee on those containers, and to apply existing antilittering law to those containers.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only three states have completely outlawed plastic bags: California, New York and Hawaii. More states have enacted legislation preventing local governments from doing the same. They are Arizona, Idaho, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida.

Since being elected in 2011, Cuyahoga County Councilwoman Sunny Simon has strongly advocated against the use of plastic bags in order to help protect Lake Erie.

Particles from water bottles, straws and plastic bags litter the lake. The pieces of plastic that litter Erie’s shoreline are also harmful to humans, according to a study by Sherri Mason, a professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia, Lake Erie is polluted with about 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer.

When plastic ends up in Lake Erie, animals eat these pieces of plastics, and the pollutants slowly work up the food chain to humans. In total, over 100 million pieces of plastic pollute Lake Erie, according to Mason’s study.

Last month, Cuyahoga County followed Orange Village, banning plastic bags from grocery stores, retailers and markets throughout the entire county. The ban is set to take effect January 1, 2020.

The proposed bans will not affect plastic bags used for pet waste, newspapers, dry cleaning, restaurant orders or prescriptions.

Alongside the legislation, Simon plans to roll out an educational campaign, giving Ohio’s second-largest county information about the hazards and perils of plastic pollution, how harmful plastics end up in Erie and why this ban makes sense for the county.

“I think with that education, that people really buy in and understand that we need to do something about it,” Simon said.

Just two hours after Cuyahoga County Council members voted to eliminate plastic bags, the city of Bexley, about 145 miles away, followed suit. Bexley’s city council voted 6-1 to approve the legislation.

House Bill 242 was introduced on May 13, just two weeks before the ban was passed in Cuyahoga County and Bexley. Now it remains unclear if the ban will ever take effect in Ohio.

Some of the state representatives strongly oppose individual communities passing these bans.

The sponsors of House Bill 242 did not return repeated calls to comment on their legislation for this story.

Simon says local governments are forced to pass their own environmental-protection laws because it is unlikely that the state of Ohio will do it.

When Bexley’s city council voted 6-1 in favor of banning plastic bags last month, Councilman Richard Sharp, a self-declared conservative, was the only dissenting vote.

“We should encourage people to be responsible and make the decision on their own,” Sharp said in last month’s meeting.

Sharp’s ideas for environmentalism partially coincide with the newly proposed House Bill 242.

“We need to educate our children, make them woke, that it is their responsibility to take care of the issue, not the government to tell people what to do,” Sharp said.

Simon said that the conservative makeup of Ohio’s government has been one of Cuyahoga County’s greatest challenges in preserving Lake Erie. House Bill 242 is another barricade that stands in the way of the movement for which Simon worked so diligently.

This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by The George Gund Foundation.


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Environmental groups in Arizona say they've faced challenges in advancing environmental protections, and that could now become even harder under a second Trump presidency.

Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club's Grand Canyon Chapter, said during his first presidency, Donald Trump rolled back a number of environmental rules, withdrew from the Paris Agreement and deepened reliance on fossil fuels. She expects Trump to disrupt clean-energy and climate-action progress made under the Biden administration.

"There is a big concern that President-elect Trump will try to reverse full throttle. I don't think he will be able to do that because there will be, at least on some things, enough bipartisan support that he won't be able to just get rid of everything," Bahr explained.

Bahr added while the Inflation Reduction Act will likely be a target for the incoming administration, it is important to remember much of the funds in the legislation have already been allocated to help communities make clean-energy investments.

Bahr said Arizona is already experiencing hotter and longer summers and that could intensify if not addressed, translating to higher energy bills and more deaths each year from the extreme heat.

"The cost of not doing something is much greater than the cost of doing something. Not to mention that clean energy, solar and wind, they're cheaper than fossil fuels. So economically, it just makes sense to do that," she continued.

The transition to clean energy will save the average family up to $7,200 per year in energy costs and another $1,500 per year in health-care costs, according to the Sierra Club.

Bahr says investing in clean energy and climate action goes beyond securing a prosperous future for humans, but encompasses habitat conservation and preservation for species of all kinds.

"One election does not mean that we are not on the right track with what we are asking for. Don't take it as a repudiation of everything that you believe in," she concluded.

As Minnesotans click the "purchase" button when shopping online for the holidays, they're urged to consider two things: toys from overseas suppliers that don't meet safety standards and how e-commerce affects the environment. In its annual toy safety report, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group says loopholes in shipping enforcement allow too many unsafe and illegal products, including those designed for kids, to flood the market.

Teresa Murray, PIRG's consumer watchdog director, said items shipped in bulk that fall below a certain value threshold often avoid scrutiny from U.S. customs officials, and that means for now, shoppers have to be extra vigilant.

"We've also gotten used to how easy it is to shop online, but when people are shopping online, they just need to be super, super careful. Take a few minutes and figure out where that toy is coming from," she said.

Murray added that there are concerns about some toys containing lead or other toxins or having small parts that easily break off, and added that the good news is, there's a bipartisan tone in Washington, D.C., to address the issue. Meanwhile, sustainability experts warn the massive growth in e-commerce leads to more distribution centers in rural areas, increasing trucking distances and exacerbating carbon emissions.

Another concerning trend in the report is the persistent illegal online sales of recalled toys. Murray said brick-and-mortar retailers are more committed to keeping those items out of circulation. Beyond protecting your family and the environment, she suggests replacing digital purchases with in-person shopping might help the economy, because you're fighting back against counterfeit products.

"Frankly, it hurts U.S. companies and U.S. workers when you have these brands that have built a reputation and somebody - you know, it could be domestic, it could be international - and they're making a product that looks just like yours," she explained.

As for e-commerce waste, Minnesota recently adopted a law that incentivizes producers to scale down their use of packaging that often ends up in landfills. A handful of other states have taken similar steps. And online shopping giants like Amazon have highlighted efforts to phase out packaging elements deemed unfriendly to the environment.


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A nonprofit group that tracks oil and gas development has created an interactive map to show how close CO2 pipelines in Great Plains states come to environmentally and ecologically sensitive areas.

The map includes Indigenous land that hasn't been included in similar previous projects.

Ted Auch, Midwest program director for the FracTracker Alliance, said it focuses on Indigenous areas but goes further, showing in detail how close proposed CO2 pipelines would come to soybean and ethanol facilities, for example, but also to private land.

He said the interactive map is an improvement over existing ones.

"Which is to say that you could look at it as a static image, but you can't interact with or manipulate the data in terms of, like, scrolling in, scrolling out, finding addresses - you know, that kind of thing," said Auch. "It's available as a PDF or a JPG. So, what we've done is, we've taken that stuff and we've digitized it and we've included it on this map, so that people can actually - spatially and in real time - interact with the data itself."

The Great Plains Action Society says CO2 pipelines pose risks that disproportionately affect Indigenous communities and people of color.

Auch said FracTracker is working on another version that takes a deeper look at the proximity of pipelines to the Winnebago reservation south of Sioux City.

Energy companies say the pipelines are a safe and effective way to capture carbon from industrial processes, and store it underground, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Auch said the interactive map will give farmers and other landowners near the proposed pipelines what they need to understand what's happening on their land, leveling the information playing field with corporate interests.

"You have these large, multinational corporations, and then on the other side of the ledger are small, medium-sized frontline or Indigenous groups that either have small budgets or no budgets," said Auch, "and don't have the capacity, the time, or the expertise to develop maps to inform their organizing activism or advocacy."

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in Omaha is making a livestream available as it hears oral arguments today in a case involving Iowa landowners affected by CO2 pipeline proposals, some of whom face seizure of their property by eminent domain if the Summit Carbon Solutions project moves forward.




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