The Borough of Etna may soon follow in the footsteps of cities like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in banning single-use plastic bags. Pittsburgh’s ban, approved last April, was to go into effect this spring but Mayor Ed Gainey said the city will delay enforcing it until Oct. 14.

At its regular borough council meeting on April 18, council members listened to information provided by Ashleigh Deemer, deputy director of Penn Environment — a statewide environmental advocacy group — about why single-use plastic laws are a good idea.

“Plastic waste is everywhere. We receive plastic, whether we want it or not, in our takeout, at the grocery store, ” Deemer said in a subsequent interview with the Tribune-Review. “These are things that we use for just a few minutes and then we throw them away except there really is no ‘away,’ right? These plastics make their way into our landfills where they are incinerated or often they end up as litter in our communities and plastic waste never fully biodegrades. We find it tattered and in shreds around the neighborhood.”

Plastic breaks down into tiny particles called microplastics that then wash into our waterways, Deemer said.

“There’s really no way to get microplastics out of our rivers and streams once they are there. Unfortunately, this means that fish and other animals take these plastics, mistake them for food and plastics make their way into our food chain and into our bodies,” she said. “Plastics can carry a lot of other pollutants with them that can cause things like cancer and hormone disruption.”

Deemer and Penn Environment have been working with municipalities across Pennsylvania to pass bans to minimize plastic pollution. She said roughly 15 municipalities in Pennsylvania have passed a variety of plastics policies in the state and by Penn Environment’s calculations, this will eliminate about 4,300 tons of plastic waste and prevent the use of about 780 million single-use plastic bags annually.

“We use a lot of (plastic) and local policies can make a huge difference,” Deemer said.

And based on some of the feedback from Etna Borough Council members, it seems they’re open to exploring the idea.

“It’s a good idea because we have a problem with plastics,” council member Alice Gabriel said. “They are polluting our water sources. We’re at the bottom of the watershed so everything goes into our sewers and gets washed into the rivers and it’s not good.”

Deemer said now that Pittsburgh has passed its ban on single-use plastic bags and is on the way to implementation, it’s important to get other municipalities in Allegheny County thinking about it.

“Most of the plastic laws in Pennsylvania are actually in eastern PA and Philadelphia,” Deemer said. “So, we want to get the ball rolling here. Using Pittsburgh as an example, we’ve been talking to many local leaders about this issue and Etna is on the river.

“River towns, given the proximity to our water ways, it’s a really good opportunity to prevent things from washing into the three rivers.”

Gabriel said she would love for Etna to be able to work with Sharpsburg and Millvale on dealing with plastic pollution and that Etna’s council is going to form a committee at the next council meeting to further investigate the issue and review information provided by Penn Environment.

“I’m not looking to push this on anybody,” she said. “We’ll talk to small business owners. We want to make sure small businesses are on board. It’s not something that we want to rush.”

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