{"id":239831,"date":"2026-07-10T00:44:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T00:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/239831\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T00:44:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T00:44:07","slug":"new-survey-finds-low-compliance-with-philadelphias-plastic-bag-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/239831\/","title":{"rendered":"New survey finds low compliance with Philadelphia\u2019s plastic bag ban"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A <a href=\"https:\/\/environmentamerica.org\/pennsylvania\/resources\/over-half-of-philly-businesses-surveyed-were-found-violating-the-citys-law-on-single-use-plastic-bags\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">new survey by PennEnvironment<\/a> found low compliance with Philadelphia\u2019s ban on single-use plastic bags.<\/p>\n<p>Philadelphia estimates that the plastic bag ban kept 200 million single-use bags out of the waste stream in its first year, but environmental activists think the city could be doing more.<\/p>\n<p>The survey of 84 businesses in the city found that a quarter of the businesses were ignoring the ban, and 55% were not charging for paper bags. The ban\u2019s sponsor, Councilman Mark Squilla, said the charge is an essential element to the legislation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe goal was to change behavior, in that people will then bring bags with them and have reusable bags at all times,\u201d said Squilla. \u201cWe know that changing behavior is what is needed to make this law successful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The bill put the Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&amp;I) in charge of enforcement, and Mayor Cherelle Parker split the department in two to make it easier for L&amp;I to keep up with policing quality of life violations such as plastic bag use. Despite the changes, Faran Lavitz with PennEnvironment still thinks the city should be doing more.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGreater enforcement is needed to deter businesses that will continue to violate the law and show it doesn\u2019t pay to be a bad actor,\u201d said Savitz.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement to KYW Newsradio, L&amp;I said 33 complaints have been received for non-compliance with the plastic bag ban so far in 2026. That\u2019s compared to the more than 200 the department said it received in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>L&amp;I also said that the enforcement of a monetary cost for an alternative bag (like paper) \u201cfalls outside of our inspectors\u2019 jurisdiction.\u201d The inspector also actually has to witness a plastic bag being distributed to report a violation.<\/p>\n<p>It also encouraged residents to file complaints to 311.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 A new survey by PennEnvironment found low compliance with Philadelphia\u2019s ban on single-use plastic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1131,69,71,70,103141,2889,19560],"class_list":["post-239831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-environment","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-department-of-licenses-and-inspection","tag-pollution","tag-trash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}