Montgomery County Council approves ban on most plastic bags

The Montgomery County Council in Maryland on Tuesday approved a ban on most plastic bags in stores and doubled the price for paper bags after having a 5-cent tax on both types of bags for years.

The bill, introduced in October, would prohibit plastic bags and would implement a 10-cent tax on new paper bags with a few exceptions. The law is meant to spur shoppers to use reusable bags.

The ban passed the council unanimously and would go into effect in January 2026 once it is signed by Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, the Montgomery County Council said.

The measure includes exceptions: Plastic newspaper bags and bags intended for waste, bags at seasonal events such as street fairs, yard sales and farmers markets, bags used for bulk packaging of items such as fruits, candy and ice, garment and dry cleaning bags, bags used for prescription drugs or perishable or otherwise unwrapped food, and bags used to transport live animals.

Paper bags used for prescription drugs, the wrapping of live fish, mollusks, crustaceans and bugs, leftovers, drive-thru food, food truck fare, and food delivered by a third-party service will be exempt from the 10-cent tax.

Transactions involving the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, or Women, Infants and Children Program benefits also will be exempt, the council said.

The ban comes after a 2023 report by the Montgomery County Office of the Inspector General that found enforcement of the plastic bag tax was uneven and that the county could have lost out on as much as $8.2 million in revenue from retailers that weren’t sending bag tax payments to the county.

The OIG report found that the county didn’t come up with a way to identify all retailers that should have been paying the bag tax.

Under the new policy, businesses will have to pay the county 5 out of every 10 cents taxed. That money will go into the county’s water quality protection fund. Under the existing plastic bag tax, they pay the county 4 out of every 5 cents taxed.