'Greener alternative': Cape businesses support plastic water bottle ban, seek substitutes
By the time summer rolls around next year, Cape tourists will go to the grocery store near their vacation home to gather supplies for the beach, and might do a double-take when trying to find store-bought water.
Ten towns on the Cape have voted to ban single-use plastic water bottles. That ban went into effect recently for Brewster, Wellfleet, Falmouth, Harwich, Orleans and Provincetown.
Other towns’ bans will be implemented over the next several months. Eastham’s will take effect Sept. 21, Dennis and Chatham’s ban will start Dec. 31 and Sandwich will ban single-use plastic water bottles starting January 2022.
While every town on the Cape has banned the sale of plastic bottled beverages on town property, even more could be following in line with the retail ban. Mashpee, for instance, is slated to vote on a measure to ban the commercial sale of single-use plastic water bottles at its Oct. 18 town meeting.
“Our intention in putting in these bans and focusing on this effort was to get people to start to think about their consumption beyond what is in a store,” said Madhavi Venkatesan, founder and executive director of Sustainable Practices, a group that pushed for the bans of single-use plastic bottles in each Cape town.
People can make a difference if they consider the environmental impact of their consumption choices, she said.
In 2019, the Conservation Law Foundation advocated for bans on plastic bottles, cups, straws and bags, citing environmental and human health concerns in production and recycling. The organization also referenced low recycling rates that the Environmental Protection Agency estimated at 8.7% in 2018 for all plastics produced in the U.S.
For businesses who have already made the change from plastic to alternatives, it has been a shaky but necessary change.
Colleen Parrish, owner of Woods Hole Market and Provisions, said she also thinks the plastic water bottle ban is a good idea.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m all for whatever is positive for the environment,” Parrish said.
Her store has also carried alternatives to plastic bottled water in the past before the ban and has tried to limit its trash footprint by using biodegradable materials and composting things. Since the ban took effect, Parrish has been trying to find companies that provide alternative water containers that are also not expensive to the consumer. She hopes more vendors start using alternatives to plastic and provide more options for stores.
As a business that closes during the winter, she also would have liked to have gotten through the shoulder season on the Cape before the ban took effect. As someone who lives by the ocean, she understands and supports the ban.
“I’m certainly for anything that helps us and our environment,” Parrish said.
Britney Forsythe, with Maurice’s Market in Wellfleet, said Wednesday the store did not have single-use containers of water for sale, as it closes at the end of the summer and just pulled out all of the plastic water bottles.
She thinks the plastic water bottle ban was a good idea, but could have been implemented better, saying it was abrupt. She said the store never heard anything about the ban until someone came in and noticed that it was were selling plastic water bottles.
Forsythe would also like to see a ban of all plastic across the board, instead of just water bottles.
“Overall I think it’s a good idea,” she said. “I just think it could have been executed a little differently.”
Liz Lovati, owner of Angel Foods in Provincetown, said she supports the ban and agreed that it should be expanded to other plastic items. She does think, however, the town should have provided businesses with lists of alternatives to sell and to also set up water filling stations around town.
“I’ve been floundering finding the right substitute,” Lovati said.
She ordered single-use cartons of water not realizing that they were lined with plastic. Lovati let her supply of plastic water bottles run out and when the ban took effect started selling single-use water cans. She also has been selling a lot of gallon water jugs.
“We got cans, and everyone seems to be happy with them,” Lovati said. “They taste good.”
Since the bans took effect in multiple towns, Venkatesan said, Sustainable Practices has seen towns enforce it well and the product be eliminated from the shelves.
The problem, however, is that the mentality hasn’t changed, she said.
Some residents have taken to social media to complain about the ban, citing concerns about alternatives and the quality of tap water.
Plastic is a convenient product, but it comes at a high cost. The group’s whole campaign is about reduction as a whole, not substitution, she said.
“Don’t look at what we should substitute,” she said. “Look at what we did before this product came out in the market.”
The No. 1 alternative is to bring your own bottle and refill it. Aluminum is also less harmful to the environment, she said. Even paper cartons that, although might have plastic lining, still contribute less plastic than full plastic.
Venkatesan said tap water is much more regulated and controlled than bottled water.
“This is not a disposal issue,” Venkatesan said. “It’s not a recycling issue. This is a life cycle product issue.”
Plastics have a long lifespan, sometimes taking hundreds of years to fully biodegrade, depending on the kind of plastic and its environment, according to the American Chemical Society.
The next step, Venkatesan said, is to pass the single-use plastic water bottle ban in the rest of the Cape towns. Then the group will move to ban all single-use plastic and move toward compostables. Sustainable Practices wants to work with other organizations to establish locations for compost facilities on Cape Cod, where residents can compost their food waste as well and pick up compost to use.
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