Feb. 27—Santa Fe County might soon follow the city’s lead in banning plastic bags and other single-use plastics at stores.

The County Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to publish an ordinance that would ban stores and restaurants in unincorporated areas of Santa Fe County from providing customers with single-use plastic bags or polystyrene containers like Styrofoam.

Stores could instead choose to provide reusable carryout bags, recycled-content paper bags or recyclable cardboard boxes to customers. The proposed ordinance includes several exceptions, such as for bags used for newspaper deliveries or to transport toxic chemicals.

Retailers would also be banned from giving out single-use plastic stirrers or splash guards and could only provide customers with single-use plastic straws, utensils or condiment packets upon request or at self-service stations.

If commissioners pass the ordinance after a public hearing March 26, businesses in unincorporated parts of the county will need to comply with it by Oct. 26.

Commissioner Anna Hansen said the plastic bag ban has been a long time coming.

“I think this is really important for awareness of how damaging plastic is to our environment, to our health and to our well-being. It is not just something that is convenient,” she said. “Sixty years ago, [we] were able to figure out how to manage without all this plastic, and I think we can do that again.”

Commissioners established a working group to study a ban on single-use plastics in May 2022; the five-member group presented its recommendations to ban some plastic bags and foam containers September.

Bans elsewhere have made a significant dent in plastic pollution, working group members said in their report, which estimated county residents use millions of single-use plastic bags per year.

A potential downside: Alternatives to single-use plastics cost “substantially more” — plastic bags cost stores about 2 cents each while some paper bags cost around 14 cents each, for example. However, there are ways businesses can mitigate that expense, said Sarah Pierpont, chair of the county’s single-use plastics working group and executive director of the New Mexico Recycling Coalition.

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“The idea is that people will begin to bring reusables,” she said.

In other municipalities with single-use plastic bans, some stores no longer provide bags at all; others sell paper or reusable bags at checkout or provide cardboard boxes that pile up from items arriving at the store, Pierpont said.

Under the proposed ordinance, Santa Fe County businesses could choose how to pass the cost of alternatives on to consumers.

The working group recommended requiring stores to charge at least a 10-cent fee at the point of sale for paper bags, similar to the city of Santa Fe’s single-use plastic ban. Nine of the 10 cents go back to the city to support sustainability initiatives.

The county’s proposed ordinance does not mandate the 10-cent fee “to provide businesses with the flexibility to establish their own policies,” county spokeswoman Olivia Romo wrote in an email. “We believe businesses are best positioned to determine the appropriate fee structure for their individual needs.”

Pierpont hopes businesses will choose to implement fees at the point of sale to incentivize reuse.

“Otherwise, you’re replacing a single-use plastic bag with a single-use paper bag, and our goal is to not have single use,” she said.