Town Meeting approved a bylaw that will prohibit T-shirt style, disposable plastic bags from supermarkets, department stores and chain stores.

PLYMOUTH – Don’t worry, Ken Stone, says, you have plenty of time to stock up on durable, reusable bags.

Stone and fellow Plymouth resident Lee Burns led the successful two-year effort to have the town adopt a bylaw prohibiting T-shirt style plastic bags from large grocery and department stores.

Last Saturday Fall Town Meeting approved Article 28, the so-called “Plastic Bag Ban,” by what sounded like a unanimous voice vote.

But don’t let that fool you. It wasn’t easy, not at all Stone says.

Last year they never even made it to Town Meeting. But after both the Advisory and Finance Committee and Board of Selectmen refused to recommend their bylaw in 2015 they re-grouped.

Stone and Burns – assisted by a team of volunteers from the Plymouth First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church – worked with neighboring towns that had already adopted similar regulations to learn how they had succeeded.

They reached out to various stakeholders, including the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce – who in turn surveyed over 100 local businesses – and contacted supermarkets, bag manufacturers, relevant town committees and environmental groups as well.

“We did our homework by educating ourselves thoroughly on the pros and cons of the issue,” Stone told the Old Colony the day after Town Meeting approved the ban, “then simply reporting what we had learned to the Advisory and Finance Committee, the Board of Selectmen, the Board of Health and to Town Meeting members at all the precinct caucuses.”

They also coordinated their efforts with sympathetic organizations such as environmental groups and interest groups including the Plymouth Area League of Women Voters, the Plymouth Area Interfaith Clergy Association, the Plymouth Garden Club and others.

“Once people understood the true nature of the negative impacts on the environment,” Stone said, “most came to see the necessity and value of reducing these bags' distribution as much as possible.

“As a philosopher once said, all truth goes through three stages. First it is labeled as frivolous, then it is violently opposed, and finally it is seen as self-evident. This is a bylaw whose time had come.”

Now that Town Meeting has approved it the new bylaw will be submitted to the Municipal Law Unit of the state Attorney General's Office.

“If they find that nothing in the bylaw violates any state law,” Stone said, “they approve it. That usually takes up to three months. At that point, the bylaw becomes activated.”

Once activated effected establishments will have at least six months in which to come into compliance.

“If they find they cannot do so within that time frame for some reason, they may appeal to Plymouth's Health Department (the enforcing agent for the bylaw), which, at their discretion, may grant up to another six months to come into full compliance,” Stone says.

“So, bottom line, residents can expect to see changes beginning perhaps in February at the earliest, though most likely a few months after that,” Stone said. “Plenty of time to stock up on truly durable reusable bags.”

Follow Frank Mand on Twitter @frankmandOCM.