Try, Try Again

East Hampton Village, in April, passed an ordinance requiring that restaurants and takeout food businesses only give their patrons plastic utensils and other plastic items with food when specifically requested by the customer.

Will Suffolk County follow with a countywide law?

Not so fast.

A similar statute to the one enacted in East Hampton came before the Health Committee of the Suffolk County Legislature last month, but because it received a tie vote, 3-3, did not get through the committee.

The county bill was sponsored by Legislators Steven Englebright of Setauket and Ann Welker of Southampton. Englebright, in his many years as a county legislator and state assemblyman, gained renown for his environmental initiatives. Welker, newly elected to the County Legislature, is an ardent environmentalist and in 2017 was the first woman elected to the Southampton Town Trustees since it was established in 1686. It serves as a steward of the 25,000 acres of shores, waterways, wetlands and bay bottoms in the town.

Central to the rejection of their bill in committee was the appearance of Legislator Kevin McCaffrey of Lindenhurst and his negative vote on it at a hearing in Riverhead on June 20.

Although, said McCaffrey, he has supported county bills involving plastic before, he said he was voting against this one because it would be “unfair” to businesses.

Englebright, in an interview, said he would now make changes in the measure and reintroduce it.

He said: “I’m going to reintroduce some version of this measure. It is critically important for us to reduce plastic going into the environment. It’s not just an aesthetic issue but a health issue. Plastic fragments break down in the presence of sunlight into what are called nanoplastics or microplastics, get into our bloodstreams, get into the brain, cause cancer. This issue is not going to be allowed to drop.”

Said Welker: “We will regroup.”

She called the lack of passage of the bill in the Health Committee “very disappointing.” The measure provided “an opportunity for the county to shine. This would have been the first bill of its kind on the county level. It would be good for the environment, good for public health, and small businesses would save money.”

Days before the committee vote, Newsday ran an extensive editorial headed “Suffolk Legislature should approve a bill to reduce plastic-utensils waste.” It began by noting that “it was nearly 60 years ago that the disillusioned college student at the heart of the film ‘The Graduate’ was pulled aside by a family friend who told him, ‘There’s a great future in plastics.’ We know better now. So does the Suffolk County Legislature, which can act to reduce the scourge of plastics.”

The editorial slammed the State Legislature for its “failure” last month “to pass a bill requiring companies to reduce, recycle and reuse more of their packaging. Now attention shifts to Suffolk’s legislature, which is considering a more modest plastic reduction bill.”

It said if approved at the Health Committee hearing, “the full legislature would take it up next week. The bill should be passed. It’s common sense, it saves money, it helps the environment and human health, and it would lead the way to a future that is not so entwined in plastic.”

The measure, which didn’t get through the Health Committee, begins: “This legislature hereby finds and determines that the United States uses over 100 million plastic utensils every day and has thrown away 855 billion single-use condiment packages each year, enough to cover the entire surface of the planet.

“This legislature also finds and determines that single-use plastic utensils (forks, spoons, and knives) and condiment packages are common items consumers and patrons of food service establishments often discard … This legislature further finds [that] Suffolk County has previously enacted a wide variety of environmental protection laws such as the ban … that limited the providing of single-use plastic beverage straws and stirrers at most food service establishments.”

It continued: “This legislature determines that this law banning all unrequested single-use food service items in take-away orders, food trucks and food service establishments will also help small businesses cut down on product packaging costs. Therefore, the purpose of this law is to ban all single-use food service items in take-away orders … unless specifically requested by the customer.”

The Eastern Long Island Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation was active in passage of the East Hampton Village ordinance in a campaign titled “Skip the Stuff.” It has been active, too, in supporting the proposed county law.

Jenna Schwerzmann, representing the chapter, was among those testifying for the bill at the Health Committee hearing. She told of encountering plastic utensils and ketchup packages in beach cleanups. She urged passage of the measure.

However, speaking against the bill was Jack McCarthy, president of the Suffolk County Restaurant and Tavern Association. He called the measure “unmanageable.”

The rejection was not wholly along partisan lines, even though Englebright and Welker are Democrats and McCaffrey is a Republican. Legislator Leslie Kennedy Nesconset, a Republican, voted for passage and noted that she was “a nurse for 30 years” and was backing it for “the sake of … health.”