A Possible Beginning for the Ban of Plastic Bottles

If a group of activists gets its way, Great Barrington will soon burnish its reputation as a plastic-unfriendly town.

The Berkshire Edge reports a panel of the Berkshire Women’s Action Group and Indivisible Berkshires has gathered the necessary signatures to put a proposal before voters at the annual town meeting in May to ban the sale of drinking water in small, single-use plastic containers. The ban would extend to single-serve water bottles of 1 liter (34 ounces) or less. Click here to read the proposed bylaw.

The group’s Environment Committee took the initiative to draft a proposal for what it calls the “elimination” of the sale of the bottles. They gathered 30 signatures on a petition and presented it to the town clerk. They only needed 10.

Two of the committee members, Marj Wexler and Marcia Arland, are from Egremont and the other two, Wendy Kleinman and Jennifer Clark, hail from Great Barrington.

The group would love to make the ban wider to include soda pop and sports drinks for example, but this is start according to Clark.