Back in the good old days (pre-2017), D.C. recycling brochures said it was just fine to put plastic bags in curbside recycling bins. The problem was, many of those bags weren’t really getting recycled, but were instead getting tangled up with other recyclables, clogging recycling sorting machines, and contaminating the whole mix.

Now, the D.C. Council is aiming to help people again recycle plastic bags (as well as wrappers and other plastic films), by requiring grocery stores and other large retailers to collect and recycle these plastics, starting at the beginning of 2024.

“The whole point of this is really to get these kinds of plastics into the recycling process,” says Council member Mary Cheh (Ward-3), who sponsored the bill. “We can’t do it in the conventional way because the machinery that we use gets all mucked up with with the plastics.”

In 2010, D.C. was one of the first jurisdictions in the country to adopt a bag fee to cut down on plastic bag litter and waste. Other local counties in Maryland and Virginia have followed suit in recent years. The idea is to encourage consumers to bring their own reusable bags, rather than using disposable plastic ones, but there are still millions of plastic bags used in D.C. each year.

Last year, the District collected nearly $2 million from its five cent bag fee — meaning D.C. retailers handed out roughly 40 million disposable bags. A big number — but a fraction of the 22 million bags handed out per month before the bag fee went into effect. Money from the bag fee funds numerous environmental initiatives to improve the health of the District’s rivers, including stream restoration, green infrastructure, trash traps, and watershed education.

“We have a lot of bags out there,” says Cheh. “Also, people get a lot of materials from stores that has plastic wrapping and other kinds of plastics connected with it.”

The bill, which passed with 12 yes votes and council member absent, requires that stores place recycling bins for plastic bags in an “easily accessible and clearly visible” location within 100 ft. of their front entrance. In addition to bags, the bins must accept a wide variety of thin plastics, including: plastic wraps for furniture and electronics, bubble wrap, air pillows, plastic shipping envelopes, and all plastic films labeled #2 or #4.

Some stores already provide such recycling services, but not all do.

The bill is now awaiting the mayor’s signature.

Before 2017, D.C. residents were supposed to ball up plastic films into one bag before tossing them into the curbside bin, to keep them from causing problems with recycling sorting equipment. However, many people didn’t follow this guidance.

Cheh says the legislation is part of a suit of producer responsibility policies that the District has been developing in recent years, requiring producers of products to help out with recycling them. Earlier laws have required stores to recycle batteries and paint, which can otherwise be tough to recycle and hazardous to dispose of in the trash.

D.C.’s residential waste diversion rate, which measures how much residents recycle or otherwise keep out of landfills and incinerators, is just 25% — far behind many neighboring jurisdictions and other big cities. Montgomery County, for example, has a waste diversion rate of nearly 60%.

The District has a goal to be “zero waste” by 2032, diverting 80% of waste.