A bill to ban the banning of plastic bags in Wisconsin

Bill being discussed in Madison today

MADISON – Local communities will lose control under a measure that could be voted on today in the Wisconsin state senate. 

That’s the view that Holmen’s Marilyn Pedretti takes on a bill that would keep local governments from banning plastic grocery bags. Pedretti also chairs the regional Sierra Club chapter, a group that’s been fighting the bill in Madison.

“I think that the state legislature is getting crazy with the amount of control they’re taking over things,” Pedretti said. “If local communities want to do what they want to do, they should be allowed to.”

The measure in Madison, that’s already passed the assembly, would keep individual communities from regulating bags or any other packaging material. 

“The plastic bag issue has been studied and debated long enough, and I think everybody knows that they are bad,” Pedretti said. “And, we need to be able to ban them if we want to.”

Pedretti thinks starting small could make a statewide ban. on the bags would help make a statewide ban seem more acceptable in the near future. 

“The environment has precedence, and I would like to see a federal ban on it,” Pedretti said. “But maybe it needs to start at the local level to get people involved.”

Currently only California has a statewide ban on plastic bags. No community in Wisconsin has banned the bags, though a couple have tried. Eau Claire was the last, and that was three years ago.

“It’s kind of like cigarette smoking, when we banned them in restaurants,” Pedretti said. “It took awhile for that to catch on, but as soon as restaurants had non-smoking, more people started to return to that restaurant, and then it became a state ban because people saw that it was working.”