TRURO – The Town of Truro has recently become the fifteenth Cape town to ban departments from buying single-use plastic bottled beverages.
Buying and distributing beverages kept in single-use bottles is now illegal for the town government.
However, a retail ban for single-use plastic bottles has not yet been brought before the town.
Currently, ten Cape towns have passed a retail bottle ban, with the issue having been shot down in Yarmouth.
Though the first retail ban for single-use plastic bottles in the state was passed in Concord, the Cape is the region that leads with the most municipalities having enacted such a rule.
The towns that banned the bottles still allow their use in emergency situations such as public safety crises.
The initiative to ban the single-use containers, first undertaken by Sustainable Practices, hopes to spark more interest in cutting back on the waste which can be especially damaging to marine ecosystems like the ones the Cape is surrounded by.
“What, fundamentally, it did for us is provide a basic foundation that says, ‘look, our town government acknowledged that single-use plastic is not a positive aspect of environmental health and wellbeing, and community health and wellbeing’,” said Executive Director of Sustainable Practices Madhavi Venkatesan in a recent interview.
Venkatesan believes that these bans are only the starting point for more measures to ensure environmental and community health to come.
About Maura MacDonald
