BRISTOL — Plastic bags are banned in Bristol — starting in 2019.

Per order of the Bristol Town Council, no retail establishment, farmers’ market or restaurant is allowed to dispense plastic bags to its customers, starting next year. The ban affects large businesses like Stop and Shop, Seabra, CVS and Ace Hardware, as well as any small gift shop, liquor store or restaurant sending customers home with takeout food.

Similar bans have passed in Barrington (a few years ago) and Portsmouth (a few weeks ago). Any establishment found violating the law in 2019 can be fined up to $300 per day.

The bag ban originated with a study done by Roger Williams University students and was brought before the town council with the endorsement of the town’s conservation commission. The only dissenter on the council was Republican Mary Parella, who opposed the new ordinance for multiple reasons — some practical, some philosophical.

“How many ways do they have to tell me how to live my life?” she asked during an interview this week. “I don’t need the government telling me what kind of bag to use when I go shopping. I just think it’s overregulation. I don’t think we needed this.”

She also sees multiple practical benefits to the small, plastic shopping bags.

“I ran into some issues over the holidays when I was shopping in Middletown and Newport … I can’t tell you how many paper bags broke on me in the Middletown area (where there is a similar ban) over the holidays.”

She also talked about the practical side of using paper bags for takeout food, when the bags get soaked with oil and rip. And Ms. Parella, like many people, uses the small plastic bags to line the waste basket in her bathroom.

“So we’re using plastic bags for our trash. My newspaper is still coming in a plastic bag every day. And now, because I can’t use these bags to line my bathroom trash can, I have to buy the small trash bags for the bathroom. So it’s all plastic. How are we cutting down on the use of plastic?”

Lastly, she feels for the businesses affected by the ban. “The fact that the businesses were not brought in on this is wrong … they didn’t even know it was coming,” she said.

Long-term, she feels the plastic bag ban is just the first step in a bigger initiative. Ultimately, she said, conservationists will push to ban all bags — paper or plastic — in favor of strictly reusable bags.

“It’s not that I’m anti-environmentalist,” Ms. Parella said. “I’m not.” She said she recycles all the waste she can, including plastic bags in a recycling bin at Stop and Shop.

“It’s just frustrating to me. There’s too much regulation. I can’t go to the store and buy something and carry it home the way I’d like,” she said.

The ban does not include double-opening bags, such as the kind used by dry cleaners, or “barrier bags,” which are used by grocery stores or fish markets for wrapping meat and seafood, or florists when wrapping flowers.

The law is effective for two years, from Jan. 1, 2019, to the end of 2020, when it will expire. It would have to be renewed by a future town council to remain in effect.