Photo by sjshoreman

The District has one. Montgomery County just got its own. And now Prince George’s County is debating imposing its own five-cent fee on all plastic bags. Writes the Baltimore Sun:

An effort to impose a bag tax in Prince George’s County failed during last year’s General Assembly. It passed the Senate but did not receive enough support from Prince George’s delegates to be brought up for a vote in the House.

Sen. Paul Pinsky, a Democrat from Prince George’s who sponsored the failed legislation last year, said he was hopeful it would pass this year.

“If you drive through our county there are plastic bags stuck in trees all over the place,” Pinsky said. “I think it’s good economically and the right thing to do.”

District 21 Del. Barbara Frush, who is sponsoring the bag fee in the House, said she was disturbed when she and her grandchildren pulled over to the side of the road recently and easily found 40 plastic bags.

“It’s costly, it’s outrageous,” Frush, a Democrat, said.

If the fee passed, it would be a big victory for the Anacostia River, half of which lies within Prince George’s County. The District’s own bag fee, imposed in 2010, was premised on the need to cut down on the amount of trash — including plastic bags — making their way into the river. According to an environmental group that focuses on the Anacostia, the fee is working. In December 2011, only one percent of trash captured by three traps was made up of plastic bags; prior to the imposition of the fee, the trash was predominantly the plastic bags.