Time’s up for single-use plastics.

Or at least that remains the hope of representatives from ten environmental organizations who gathered last  week on Beacon Hill to promote bills that would ban the distribution of plastic shopping bags at retail stores statewide.

Sen. Becca Rausch and Rep. Mindy Domb stood with advocates outside the State House last week and said the state should follow the lead of many of cities and towns where single-use plastic bag bans or limitations have already been put into effect.

“The fact that we haven’t done it has allowed 156 towns to take the lead,” Domb said. “We have to level the playing field across the state and have every town sort of be the same so that — stores and customers and municipalities — no one’s put at a disadvantage.”

Supporters of the legislation imagined a future where Massachusetts leads the country in plastic waste reduction.

“The Commonwealth is behind where it should and can be when it comes to reducing plastics,” said Lydia Churchill of Environmental Massachusetts. “Nothing we use for a few minutes should pollute our environment and threaten our wildlife for hundreds of years.”

The Joint Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources heard more than 40 bills last week  afternoon designed to limit single-use plastic consumption.

If passed, the legislation backed by Rausch and Domb would prohibit retail stores from distributing single-use plastic bags to shoppers except when handling prescription medication, perishable grocery items or delicate clothing.

The bills encourage shoppers to use their own reusable shopping bags but stores could sell recycled paper bags to customers for ten cents. Stores would remit five cents from each paper bag purchase to the state, and all revenue would fund environmental projects in the municipality where the bag was purchased.

Should the state ban single-use plastic bags, establishing a unified standard in place of the 156 separate policies now in place would be important, according to Bill Rennie, vice president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. The standard should include a reworked fee per bag, he said.

“Paper bags cost significantly more per unit to produce, purchase and ship into the Commonwealth, meaning the cost for retailers and our customers significantly increases,” Rennie said. “The split fee option adds an unnecessary and complicated compliance, audit and remittal burden to the retailer.”

— Sophie Hauck / State House News Service