The Cape Cod Chronicle, January 2024
Governor Maura Healy ushered in 2024 by honoring an environmental group founded in Brewster. “I am pleased to confer upon you this Governor’s Citation in recognition of your steadfast and noble efforts to successfully advocate and implement a municipal plastic bottle ban across all 15 towns on Cape Cod,” Healy said of Sustainable Practices, “and your continued commitment to push for a retail single-use plastic water bottle ban and single-use plastic takeout container ban throughout the Cape and the Commonwealth.”
Sustainable Practices was founded in 2016 by Brewster resident and Northeastern University Associate Professor of Economics Madhavi Venkatesan, originally to promote a film series at Chatham’s Orpheum Theater and to launch a series of local petitions restricting town purchases of single-use plastic bottled beverages. To date a municipal plastic bottle ban is on the books in some manner in all 15 Cape towns; nine towns have restricted the commercial sale of single-use plastic water bottles and two towns (Harwich and Yarmouth) have eliminated plastic take out items such as forks, knives and containers.
