Plastic bag ban in North Myrtle Beach could cost merchant $250,000 more annually
When Frank and Louise Boulineau opened their modest grocery store in North Myrtle Beach’s Cherry Grove area in 1948, there were less than a hundred homes in their neighborhood.
Hurricane Hazel flattened their business in 1954 but the Boulineaus fought back and reopened, eventually converting an 8,400-square foot discount store to the Coastal Mart.
Today, Boulineau’s is a huge economic driver and shopping destination, spanning 175,000 square feet of retail space along four city blocks.
But in just a few days, their business model will forever change when North Myrtle Beach becomes the 15th South Carolina community to bar merchants from using plastic bags for most of its sales beginning July 1.
“This has been something that we’ve been aware of for quite some time and we’ve done everything we can to try and prepare for it but the problem is, none of our suppliers are meeting any deadlines right now,” Boulineau’s spokeswoman Anna Bowers said.
She estimates the store will have to spend around $250,000 more annually to swap out its plastic bags (at 3.8 cents each) to paper ones that are ten times the cost.
City leaders adopted the ordinance back in April 2019 with an original implementation date of Jan. 1, 2021. But when COVID hit and locked down the economy, officials decided to pull back its start date.
“We felt it was the best thing to do for all people,” Mayor Marilyn Hatley told The Sun News. “We don’t want to put a burden on our businesses.”
Still, with 60 miles of Atlantic coastline and a booming tourism industry driven by those pristine ocean views, Hatley said taking steps to control litter and pollutants necessitated the plastic bag ban, although transactions involving dry cleaning, meat, medications, newspapers and produce are exempt from the new rule.
“The single-use plastic bags are the ones that cause a lot of problems within the oceans and waterways, so we thought it best for our environment that we ban (them),” Hatley said. “We had long conversations for quite awhile.”
Some 400 cities and towns across America have plastic bag bans in place according to Plasticbaglaws.org, an advocacy website founded by Jennie Romer, now a deputy administrator for pollution control with the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
In the Palmetto State, 14 communities have adopted ordinances regulating single-use plastic bags including Surfside Beach, which did so in 2018.
Cheryl Kilday, president and CEO of the North Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, said the supply chain issues that plagued small businesses throughout the pandemic remain. Her organization wanted to order 15,000 paper bags that could be given to customers ahead of the July 1 implementation but it would have been $8,000 just for shipping alone.
North Myrtle Beach is home to Barefoot Landing and its 52 specialty shops that sell everything from customized knife sets to flavored beef jerky.
“We are adding another variable to the cost of goods through this ordinance,” Kilday said. “There’s never a good time to economically make that change.”
Boulineau’s, which for the past several years has sponsored a Cherry Grove beach clean up and promotes ecological sustainability on its website, is looking for the best way it can comply with the new city rule while keeping its ledger in the black.
“We’re very, very well aware of the environmental impact these single-use plastic bags can have, and we want to do everything we can to remain in compliance and protect the Earth, but it’s very difficult to do that when we can’t in the items that we need to comply,” Bowers said.
This story was originally published June 23, 2022 at 5:00 AM.