Is Montgomery County’s plastic bag ban working?

Months after Montgomery County banned grocery and convenience stores from providing customers with plastic bags, a new report says the law is working.

The Maryland Sierra Club said its study, released on Tuesday, shows that reusable bag use has risen by 23% since the law went into effect on Jan. 1.

The law, which aims to limit the environmental impact of single-use plastic bags, also increased the tax on paper bags from 5 to 10 cents.

The Sierra Club study found that the share of shoppers taking plastic carryout bags dropped from 50% before the ban went into effect to 1% after, and that the share of shoppers taking reusable bags or no bag jumped from 49% to 72%.

However, the share of shoppers taking paper bags rose from 1% to 27%. Paper bags can also have negative environmental impacts, according to experts, but are typically recyclable.

Montgomery County Council member Kate Stewart, who sponsored the legislation, told The Banner on Tuesday that the report showed better results than she had expected.

“With this new data, we see the dramatic impact that this is having in a very positive way,” she said.

Sierra Club volunteers conducted the research by observing 8,810 shoppers at 67 local chain grocery stores in October 2025 and 9,013 shoppers at 68 stores in May 2026.

The volunteers observed shoppers after they left the store but did not interact with them.

Stewart said volunteers who conduct watershed cleanups have told her that they are finding fewer discarded plastic bags in county waterways.

The Sierra Club contrasted its findings for the county overall with those from the city of Gaithersburg — the one municipality that decided not to take part in the ban. (Takoma Park and Rockville have their own bans.)

The share of shoppers using single-use plastic bags in Gaithersburg dropped only slightly from October to May, from 47% to 41%. The share taking paper bags remained below 1%, and the share taking a reusable bag or no bag rose from 53% to 59%.

“These results document the effectiveness of policies that combine a ban on provision of single-use plastic carryout bags with a tax or charge for alternatives, which incentivize shoppers to bring their own bag or not take a carryout bag at all,” Martha Ainsworth, chair of the Zero Waste Team at the Maryland Sierra Club, said in a press release Tuesday.

The ban and new tax were controversial, with dozens turning out to public hearings to support or oppose the proposal in 2025.

Gordie Brenne, treasurer of the Montgomery County Taxpayers league, told The Banner on Tuesday that he feels county residents are generally overtaxed. But he also said he is concerned that the county is not getting all the money it has coming to it from the bag tax.

Revenue from the tax is split between the county and the retailer, whose portion helps cover the cost of the bag and tax collection. The county’s portion goes into the Water Quality Protection Charge, which funds stream restoration and other conservation projects.

A 2023 Office of Legislative Oversight report, conducted when the county levied a 5-cent tax on paper and plastic bags, found that it did a poor job of collecting those taxes, and lost as much as $8.2 million over 10 years.

Brenne, pointing to that report, said he wants to see a new one from the county that can assess whether it’s doing better.

“There needs to be accountability for that,” Brenne said.

Stewart sponsored the new legislation in part because of the challenges with the previous law.

She told The Banner that the county’s outreach to businesses and work with the Department of Environmental Protection, which now has more staff dedicated to enforcing the law, has helped mitigate past problems.

She also said that she drafted the paper bag tax to be similar to those in surrounding areas, including Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties, to lessen the burden on businesses with locations across county lines.

“When we were creating this bill, we worked very closely with our local chambers of commerce and the business community, so people could be prepared and put in place what they needed to succeed,” Stewart said.