New Bedford, MA Single-Use Items: Plastic Bag Rules (2026)

1 of the New Bedford Code of Ordinances, adopted January 9, 2020, bars any "establishment" from distributing or selling single-use plastic bags anywhere in the city. The ordinance defines a covered establishment as a retail business with at least 10,000 square feet of retail space, or a business with two or more locations under the same name or ownership whose combined retail space reaches that 10,000-square-foot threshold, covering retail stores, restaurants, pharmacies, convenience and grocery stores, liquor stores, and seasonal or temporary businesses. A single-use plastic bag is defined as a plastic film-type bag, with or without handles, that is four mils thick or less and handed out at the point of sale.

The ban exempts bags customers use to bag loose produce at checkout, laundry and dry-cleaner bags, newspaper bags, and bags used to wrap frozen food, meat, or fish to contain moisture. Establishments had a six-month grace period from the ordinance's adoption to sell through or dispose of existing plastic-bag stock; after that window, any remaining stock had to be disposed of properly rather than distributed. Each day a covered establishment continues to hand out single-use bags counts as a separate violation. Fines run through the noncriminal disposition procedure of Section 17-18: an enforcing officer issues a written notice, the offender may pay the assessed penalty or request a hearing before a district court clerk within twenty-one days, and Section 17-18 caps the payable penalty at three hundred dollars per offense, meaning a nonconforming establishment can be fined for every day it keeps bagging purchases in prohibited plastic.