Bozeman residents voted 64% in favor to pass a plastics ordinance within the city. The citizens initiative will ban establishments from giving customers single-use plastic bags and polystyrene foam containers. It also bans single-use plastic straws and stirrers unless requested by a customer.
The citizen’s initiative had a rocky road to getting on the ballot. In 2021, the Montana Legislature passed HB407, a state-wide preemptive ban on bans, not allowing local governments to regulate the use of plastic bags.
Cottonwood Environmental Law Center, based in Bozeman, challenged the bill and won a lawsuit in March of 2024, marking the first time a ban on bans has been overturned.
This summer volunteers with Montana Plastic Free worked to collect 25% of resident signatures for the initiative to appear on the ballot, coming up about 300 signatures short.
Cottonwood Environmental Law Center filed a subsequent lawsuit arguing that only 15% of resident signatures were needed to place the initiative on the ballot. The city settled and allowed the measure to appear on the ballot.
Nathan Gracey, a Cottonwood employee, says the legal hurdles were in support of the citizens will.
“This is the first case where single-use plastics have been banned through a citizen ballot initiative. So I think that kind of speaks to how the citizens were really behind it,” Gracey said.
The ban will go into effect May 1st 2025. Violators will first receive a warning, then a $1,000 fine for the first violation, and a $2,000 fine for subsequent violations.
This is the first citizens initiative to appear on a ballot since 2012, when an initiative to remove fluoride from city water failed.
