SPARRING OVER PLASTIC: Efforts to ban takeout containers and other chemical-based packaging divides environmentalists and retailers.

• Date: 01 November 2022
• Author: Martin, Edward

The Swannanoa River originates in eastern Buncombe County, meanders through Black Mountain and joins the French Broad River in Asheville, not far from the city's popular art galleries and beer gardens. The river is a sliver of the beauty and natural resources of western North Carolina that attracts people from all over the world.

But the gorgeous rivers and streams across the mountainous region hold distressing secrets that are at the bottom of a heated debate.

"Learning they're polluted by petrochemicals and microplastics is not what people want to hear," says Anna Alsobrook, watershed coordinator for MountainTrue, a coalition of environmental groups that was formed in 2015.

MountainTrue, the Western North Carolina Sierra Club and other groups have formed the Plastic-Free Western North Carolina coalition. They propose to rid this region's waterways of chemicals such as phthalates, used to make grocery, garbage and other bags and other products flexible, and Styrene, a principal component of the ubiquitous takeout boxes from restaurants.

The western N.C. coalition proposes a ban on single-use plastic bags and throw-away containers that contain what environmentalists call forever chemicals. Many are carcinogens and or substances otherwise linked to childhood asthma, and nervous- and reproductive-system harm and other ailments.

"We have the water...