Empowering Change Through Policy!

Public policies are needed to bring about major change.  As individuals, and in our institutions, our behaviors can go a long way toward healing -- or harming -- the watershed. Changing public policies offers lasting, systematic change.  We all have a moral obligation to engage both in the political process and to adopt behaviors that ensure justice and respect for the entire web of life.  You can make a difference! Click here to read how a bill becomes a law in Maryland. Click here to read a great resource from MdLCV on how to influence your legislator. 

Join our Advocacy Volunteers in making a real difference for our shared home.

*Our Advocacy Volunteers receive Action Alerts every two weeks throughout the spring Legislative Session, featuring MD priority legislation updates, coordinated calls to action, and notices of national or other local policy activism.  Please complete your address information so that we can share those policies and efforts most relevant to your geographic location. 

2025 Maryland Legislative Session Priorities

  • Maryland Bottle Bill (HB0232 and SB0346) - Maryland’s beverage container litter, most of it plastic, is contributing to pollution in the State’s waters, including the Chesapeake Bay, and elsewhere in the environment, threatening marine and other wildlife, and human health. About 5.5 billion beverage containers are sold each year in Maryland, but only a quarter of them (1.4 billion) are captured for recycling. More than 4 billion containers a year, 2.6 billion of which are plastic, are left in the environment–in landfills, on roadsides, in waterways–or incinerated. Both the Anacostia and Baltimore Harbor watersheds have TMDLs for trash. Beverage containers represent 50%-80% of the trash by volume collected in Anacostia River trash traps, most of them plastic. Plastic bottles are the third most frequently littered plastic in beach cleanups.

    Beverage container deposit programs are a proven, highly effective policy for recovering used beverage containers and reducing litter. Ten U.S. states, covering about 90 million people, have longstanding, successful beverage container deposit programs, and they are spreading globally in response to the plastic pollution crisis.A small deposit is added to the purchase of beverage containers that is refunded to customers when the containers are returned for recycling. States with a 10-cent deposit have achieved beverage container recycling rates of 90%.

    The Program would place a 10- to 15-cent refundable deposit (depending on container size) on plastic, glass, and aluminum beverage containers. The deposit would be refunded when consumers return the container at a retailer or other redemption point for recycling. Retailers and conveniently located redemption facilities would be equipped with reverse vending machines, bag drops, and high-speed counting and sorting technology to expedite processing and prevent fraud.

    Download the Bottle Bill Fact Sheet here

2025 Legislative Briefing & Resource Document

Many thanks to everyone who joined us for our Legislative Briefing on February 2. We highlighted:

The Maryland Bottle Bill
The CHERISH Act
The Better Buildings Act

Here is the resource document that you can use to track developments and action alerts on these 3 pieces of legislation. We will continue to update the document during the 2025 Maryland Legislative Session.

You can also watch a recording of the briefing here.

 

Past Legislative Debriefs

We Need Congregations to Stand with Us!

Reverend Margaret Brack at Saint Alban's Episcopal Church in Salisbury discusses the Creation Care efforts that her congregation has done including 90 solar panels to supply their church's electricity, a few community gardens with vegetables, a pollinator garden, and two cisterns hooked up to collect rainwater during storms. They may not be a big congregation, but they have big dreams and know the role that they can play in climate justice.

Some of Our Past Campaigns…

  • Whole Watersheds Protection Act - In order to improve watershed health effectively and efficiently, a coordinated approach that maximizes return on investment from conservation funding sources is needed. This legislation will provide the direction, authority – and funding - needed to ensure this coordinated approach is informed by science and data. The bill will establish a pilot program to identify up to 5 impaired watersheds across Maryland. Watersheds selected for the program will be subject to a comprehensive planning and permitting process bringing together all relevant stakeholders to improve water quality on an expedited timeline using a variety of practices. The goal of the program is to rapidly (on a 5-7 year timeline) remove selected watersheds from the impaired waterways list.
  • Maryland the Beautiful Act (2023) – Global leaders are calling for the conservation of 50% of Earth’s landmass in an effort to mitigate the harmful effects of the climate crisis, and to preserve biodiversity important to human health and spirit.  The Maryland the Beautiful Act sets a new national goal of 30% of MD lands permanently preserved by 2030. This legislation passed and was signed into law. Read more!

  • Forest Conservation Act (2023) - An update to the 1991 Forest Conservation Act, this Maryland initiative aims to help curb our consumption of forested land.  Maryland is losing forests at a rate of roughly 10 acres each day. This leaves little to nothing for the next generation, something we know is entirely immoral and antithetical to our beliefs as people of faith to “love one another.” This legislation passed and was signed into law.
  • Environmental Human Rights Amendment (2022) – Seeks to place in the Declaration of Rights of our state constitution the right of each person to a healthful environment. This law did not pass. Read more.

  • AquaCon Fish Farm (2022) – A local issue; IPC took a stand alongside others to say no to the pollutant load of a proposed Salmon farm on MD’s Eastern Shore.  Read more!