North Adams Committee Finding Little Business Support For Bag Ban

The General Government Committee in North Adams wants much more information on how a single-use bag ban will affect local businesses before making any recommendations.

IBerkshires.com reports that the committee, comprised of Chairman Eric Buddington and members Rebbecca Cohen and Paul Hopkins, discussed what they had heard at last week's meeting from a number of residents and the results of a brief online survey.

Cohen had developed the survey through surveymonkey.com to gather input from businesses. At last week's meeting, a pizzeria owner had indicated owners might be leery of expressing their opinions in public.

She had received about 17 responses by Tuesday but not every business responded to every question.

She said 74 percent were for efforts on reduction but only 29 percent supported an outright ban.

The survey asked what type of business, whether they use plastic bags, how many bags they went through a day, how they feel about the ban or on imposing a fee.

Cohen said just over half were restaurants and of the total number of businesses, only a third said they didn't use plastic.

One statistic she found "pretty alarming": More than 90 percent that responded used less than 50 bags a day but just under 10 percent used more than 200.